Project Threadways has been in the works for several years. In spring 2019, our team’s planning, learning, researching, and visioning came to life at the inaugural Project Threadways Symposium, held at The Factory. Following the symposium, Project Threadways was officially established as a nonprofit 501(c)(3)—allowing us to further realize its mission of recording, studying, and exploring the history of the textile industry in The Shoals community, and the American South. Project Threadways continues to work in partnership with the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area to record oral histories, expand its exhibition, offer community programming, and plan our annual symposiums among many more exciting endeavors. 

Our second annual Project Threadways Symposium, “Textiles Across Time and Place: Examining a complicated past to create a more sustainable future,” was originally scheduled for last month; we chose to postpone it until the fall out of an abundance of caution. At this time, we are taking further steps and rescheduling it virtually for April 16 – 17, 2021.   

We’ve recently been having conversations about documenting this time in textile history, and our oral historians are able to conduct remote interviews. If you have or know someone who has worked in the textile industry, please contact think@projectthreadways.org to share your story.  

Visit here if you would like to become more familiar with work of Project Threadways.  

Register for the 2021 virtual symposium here.  

Visit here to learn how you can support the Project Threadways nonprofit.   

We’ll see you next spring, but we encourage you to be in touch with questions or conversations in the meantime by contacting think@projectthreadways.org. We’ll continue to share updates and conversations about the history of textiles on our blog.