2026 Craft Fellowship Awards
2026 Craft Fellowship Awards
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APPLICATIONS OPEN
2026 Craft Fellowship Awards 2026 Craft Fellowship Awards — APPLICATIONS OPEN
A fellowship for focused making, research and exchange in Vietnam.
Each year, TextileSeekers invites one creative to step away from the usual pace of production and spend focused time in Vietnam, engaging with materials, makers, landscapes and cultural practices.
THE JURY
JOHANNA ENGVALL
Johanna Engvall is a Sweden-based multidisciplinary creative working across writing, cultural consultancy, and experiential practice. She is Writing Editor at Faith Love Hope Magazine and works with storytelling, cultural value, and the imagination, drawing on lived experience. With a background in brand storytelling, event curation, and community building, she has led retreats and cultural gatherings internationally, translating aesthetic and material sensibilities into emotionally resonant experiences.
ERIN WASSON
Erin Wasson is an American model and creative consultant known for her long-standing work across fashion, art, and culture. Beyond modeling, she has collaborated with brands and creatives on projects rooted in craft, storytelling, and thoughtful design, bringing a strong editorial eye and cultural perspective to her work.
EVA DIXON
Eva Dixon is a business mentor and empowerment coach with an academic background in Business Psychology (MSc) and Neuroscience. As well as working with a diverse array of business leaders, entrepreneurs, artists and creatives, Eva brought her expertise to the next generation of thought leaders as guest professor at the University of West London.
BONNIE LANGEDIJK
Bonnie Langedijk is the founder of media brand HURS. Langedijk launched HURS to reimagine the women's media landscape, creating a platform that celebrates modern aesthetics, intelligent storytelling, and authentic community. HURS is for women who see the world differently-those who connect through style, art, design, and culture.
NICOLAS HENNI-TRINH DUC
Nicolas Henni-Trinh Duc holds a Phd in art history from La Sorbonne University. His research focuses on the evolution of images in situations of transnational contacts (colonisation, migration, globalisation). In particular, he examines the transformation of artistic practices, and the genealogy of forms, especially within a Vietnamese context, and more broadly, a Eurasian framework.
YU MEI HUANG
Yu Mei Huang is a Taiwanese-born, London-based textile artist and designer whose practice bridges traditional knitting and contemporary textile art. Rooted in her East Asian heritage and informed by fieldwork with artisans across Asia, she works with origin-sourced fibres such as papaya-softened silk, hand-spun hemp, and Mongolian cashmere. Treating yarn as both medium and memory, her sculptural installations explore tactility, displacement, and cultural continuity.
The TextileSeekers Craft Fellowship is a research-led programme conceived as a period of focused inquiry and curation. Designed for one selected creative, it offers time away from production cycles wherein you’re free to create space for observation, profound exchanges and the development of a single, considered object.
The fellowship unfolds through a six-day hosted immersion in Mai Chau; a landscape where material culture remains inseparable from daily life. The experience is shaped through proximity – you’re encouraged to dive deeply into shared time, conversation and direct engagement – allowing new ideas to emerge in response to the landscapes you encounter and the people and practices you meet.
Applicants are invited to propose a concept for one object – sculptural, functional, wearable or interpretive – developed through close attention to material, technique and environment. Evolving through dialogue with regional practices and tools, the object will be shaped by presence rather than prescription, arising from the experience and reflecting new inspirations uncovered.
At its core, the TextileSeekers Fellowship privileges attention over acceleration. It’s about creation as a form of listening; a process by which the resulting object stands not as an endpoint, but as a trace of encounter that endures beyond the fellowship itself.
What is new this year? – The Craft Fellowship
In this edition, the TextileSeekers Fellowship centres on the development of a single object. The emphasis shifts from broad exploration to a focused act of making – one work shaped through time, material attention, and context.
Applicants are invited to propose a concept for an object – sculptural, functional, wearable, or interpretive – approached as a site of inquiry rather than outcome. The selected fellow develops this work through sustained engagement and dialogue, allowing form and meaning to emerge through proximity, observation, and making, rather than predefined intent.
The object is not produced for the setting, but evolves within it – informed by shared time, material presence, and the conditions in which it takes shape.
HOW TO APPLY
Applications are welcome from designers, artists and makers proposing a single object shaped by material curiosity and cultural awareness.
To apply, please share:
A written proposal outlining your object concept (up to 500 words)
A visual reference, sketch, or moodboard
A CV or portfolio with relevant work
Optional: a brief note on materials or practices you feel drawn toward
The Fellowship is offered as an invitation – a moment to pause, consider direction and reflect on what you wish to explore next through making.
CLOSING NOTE
If this resonates, you are welcome to approach it in your own time. The TextileSeekers Fellowship is conceived as a space of attentiveness – where ideas are given room to settle, shift, and unfold through presence, dialogue, and shared experience.
Craft Fellowship Alumni
“The Craft Fellowship deepened my understanding of the relationship between craft, culture and place. Learning directly from makers and discovering traditional techniques showed me how much knowledge, history and meaning are held within the materials and processes we work with.” - Yu Mei Huang
