Christine Risley Award Guidelines

The Christine Risley Award is a £500 cash prize awarded annually by the Goldsmiths Textile Collection & Constance Howard Gallery to a graduating Goldsmiths BA student for outstanding creative practice-based work relating to the field of textiles. The award is made possible by the generous bequest of the late Christine Risley, a Goldsmiths alumna and widely respected textile educator, author, and practitioner.

The Christine Risley Award celebrates the diversity and plurality of contemporary textile practice. As such the prize aims to honour work that demonstrates original engagement with textiles, broadly conceived. The £500 cash prize also comes with the opportunity to exhibit work in the Constance Howard Gallery, home to the Goldsmiths Textile Collection.

If you are a graduating BA student and wish your degree show work to be considered for the Christine Risley Award, please send an expression of interest providing the following information:

• Your Department
• Where you will be exhibiting your degree show work (e.g. which degree show location, or online)
• You may include an artist statement (one side of A4 max) if you wish.

Submissions should be sent to textiles (@gold.ac.uk) by 5pm on Monday 10 June 2024.

Submission specification

1. The awarding panel is made up of Library Special Collections staff and an external judge.
2. The work has to relate to or engage with textiles, whether materially or conceptually. It may encompass any media and must be practice-based/creative work
3. The Award is open to any undergraduate student currently enrolled in the Art or Design Departments at Goldsmiths who is in their graduating year at the time of submission
4. If your degree show work is being exhibited online or digitally in some other way, please send an expression of interest along with your submission in the following format:
   
   • Up to 10 JPEG images. Files should be saved as Surname_Given name_1 (2,3, etc.)
   • Links to video (YouTube / Vimeo), if applicable
5. By entering you are agreeing to share any files/links submitted with the internal and external judges for the purposes of assessing the award only. All files will be shared securely and will be deleted following the judging process.
6. The winner will receive £500 and the opportunity for the work to be exhibited in the Constance Howard Gallery.
7. The judges retain the right not to award a prize.

About Christine Risley

As a textile artist, Christine Risley (1926-2003) was a key member of Constance Howard's remarkable and innovative department of textiles. In the 1960s Christine pioneered the teaching of machine embroidery and established one of the most exciting courses of the period. A great teacher, and writer on the subject, she encouraged her students to be adventurous in both work and life.