This summer, Cambridge-based textile artist Mia Upton was one of six creatives showcased in the Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge Open Studios’ Up & Coming Artists 2025 programme. Across two weekends in July (19–20 and 26–27), she brought her traditional loom into the museum’s newly refurbished Studio space, offering live demonstrations that invite visitors to see — and try — the craft of weaving up close.
Upton’s practice combines traditional techniques with bold approaches to colour and design, often drawing on her Scottish heritage and her Hong Kong upbringing to explore themes of identity and belonging. From reimagining tartan as a feminist statement to translating fishing nets into cloth, her work bridges history and self-discovery through textiles.
We spoke with Mia about her journey into weaving, her experience of showing work at the Fitz, and how she sees the role of craft in today’s art world.
Scarlett Evans (SE): Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about how you came to work in textiles? What drew you to working with a loom?
Mia Upton (MU): I first came across weaving as a teenager volunteering in Malawi. I’d gone there to teach English after my GCSEs, staying in a remote mountain village. There was an elderly woman there who was weaving using a traditional practice where you balance yourself against a tree, and you use something called a warp which holds the material.
I would find her there before sunrise and for the first week or so she let me watch, and I found it amazing to watch this material grow, like a plant or a flower, watching it bloom and change from a string to a piece of fabric. After the first week she let me try it and that was it for me, I was hooked.
When I came back, I’d already chosen Fashion as an A-level, more as a throwaway subject. But when I showed my teacher pictures of weaving, it turned out she had a loom at home. She brought it in, taught me to use it, and I was completely immersed. Later, I studied textiles at university, training in both traditional artisan methods – spinning yarn from raw materials, weaving from scratch – and in design and fashion.
SE: The Fitzwilliam Museum and Cambridge Open Studios recently showcased your work. What was the feedback like, and how did people respond to trying weaving for the first time?
MU: It was very nerve-wracking at first because it was my own loom which I feel very protective over! But when I stepped back and just allowed people to explore it and make mistakes, it became a joy to watch.
The patterns I had on the loom were inspired by pieces I saw at the museum itself. I sketched the objects and made a note of colors that I liked, and then created designs that were really easy to read for beginners. I deliberately used very thick yarn so that people could see what they made very quickly – the bigger the material you use, the quicker you can create something visible. People were getting so excited by seeing maybe just two centimeters of what they’ve made. The children in particular were so excited to weave, they didn’t want to get off. And it was so lovely to see all these little kids so fascinated by the making of cloth and so interested in asking me so many questions about how everything worked.
SE: How do you see the role of craft—especially weaving and textiles—in today’s art world?
MU: Every established culture in the world has had textiles. If a civilization got to the point of farming and growing food, they had textiles because they were able to farm sheep for wool, and make their own crops for linen.
What really changed this is fast fashion. So in the early 2000s and the end of the 90s, the fast fashion craze ruined the textile industry because tons of mills and companies were shutting down because they couldn’t keep up with the speed of production and cost. It’s now at the point where the course I studied at university has had to shut down because there aren’t enough students – it’s really sad and it’s one of the reasons why it’s so important to keep the craft alive.
I also see weaving as a feminist practice. It’s historically been considered “women’s work,” and my degree course was entirely female. I grew up with a single mother, so I’ve always been aware of the power of women’s labor — and weaving feels like a way of reclaiming that.
Unlike digital media, textiles are slow. You can’t rush weaving. The process is physical, meditative, and deeply material. I think in today’s world, where everything is fast and disposable, the act of making something tactile and lasting feels radical.
SE: Looking back, were there moments in your girlhood that sparked your interest in art or making things with your hands?
MU: I’ve always loved detailed, intricate things. Even as a child, I was fascinated by craft and by making. That’s only grown as I’ve studied more history. My degree combined historical research with creative practice, so I spent years diving into how different cultures wove, what methods they used, and how textiles evolved through industrial revolutions.
That love of history now runs through my work. I use traditional methods, but I twist them with modern color and design, bridging past and present, detail and playfulness.
SE: You’ve previously used tartan in your work to explore Scottish heritage. How do you approach weaving cultural identity into contemporary textile art?
MU: I grew up in Hong Kong, and my family has been out there since after the First World War. But I’m also Scottish by heritage, and I found out while studying my masters degree that I’m from a royal clan in Scotland.
Being a third culture child, and grappling with how to fit in, understanding my own self-identity was something I struggled with and which I used art to explore.
My tartan work was a way of connecting the dots with this. At first I just wanted to understand it technically – the structure, how it was made, the colours that were chosen. But I didn’t feel particularly connected to it at first. I needed to look back into my own history and my own family’s colours, so I started interjecting my family clan’s tartan.
Even then there was a disconnect because tartan is traditionally made for only men to wear.
At special events, tartan was worn by the men to represent the presence of different clans. Any wives or daughters there would usually just wear a plain dress with a tiny pin with tartan ruffling to show they belonged to the man and the man’s clan. I wanted to disrupt that history by creating a tartan for women.
For my BA dissertation, I researched the color pink and why it became gendered as “feminine.” I combined that research with my tartan practice to design pink tartans. And I started asking what I wanted to wear if I was wearing a kilt. What pattern would I want? What colors would I want? That led me to experiment more freely. I learned that tartan is defined not by weave or material but by its method of color-blocking, three colors in three different sizes. Once I understood that, the world became my oyster.
At the same time, I was researching my Hong Kong heritage. My family were fishermen, so I drew on that culture as well. I studied fishing nets and began weaving textiles that echoed their forms, using indigo dye and traditional net-weaving methods, then translating those into cloth patterned with diamond motifs to mimic nets moving in water. The result was a fusion of Scottish and Hong Kong traditions: tartans that honored both sides of my identity.
Find out more about Mia on her website.
-Scarlett Evans
Interviewer/ Manager, Contemporary Art
Girl Museum