Silk Music is a creative project for young people in Sudbury to explore the cultural heritage of silk through music technology, sonic arts, and textiles.

Through a series of ten weekly workshops at Sudbury Arts Centre, young musicians made ‘graphic scores’ based on the sounds of jacquard looms, generated textile designs based on the illustrations, and composed music using the fabric as inspiration. The group performed their compositions to friends and family on Tuesday 15th July 2025.

The project began with a visit to Sudbury Silk Mills, where we learnt about the Jacquard loom, a 19th-century invention that used punch cards to control woven patterns. Alongside learning about warp, weft, we discovered playful stories from the mill’s past, like the canaries once kept among the machines, their songs echoing through the rhythmic sounds of weaving. 

In follow-up workshops at Sudbury Arts Centre, we translated textile patterns into sound, using music technology to turn punch card sequences into beats and melodies. Inspired by the loom’s resemblance to a pianola, we worked with creative technologist Dave Norton to create software that uses computer vision to read punchcards as musical scores, and allow them to control electronic musical instruments via MIDI.

We further explored the parallels between patterns in music and textiles by creating “graphic scores” of recordings from the silk mill. Graphics scores are a form of musical notation that use visual symbols, shapes, and images instead of standard musical notes, and can convey far more than traditional means. Textile artist Jade Benton worked with these user generated scores to create the pattern from which the final weave would be made.

“After attending the graphic score workshop, I knew that I wanted to convey those scores into the Jacquard. The colour I chose were inspired by the zestful energy in the room, such as the orange and greens, as well as the undulating organic sound waves, a sharp contrasting nod to the Jacquard weaving process which is mechanical and binary.”

During the project, we also worked with Vancci Wahn, a curatorial studies researcher from the School of Philosophical, Historical, and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Essex. 

“The development of the silk industry in Suffolk and Essex reveals histories in contrapuntal tunes: a tangled weave of innovation, labour division, and cultural-political diffraction stitched into the fabric of the modern world.”

The stunning fabric you see before you is testament to the creativity of all the project’s contributors. Weaving music from silk and silk from music.

Producer CLIP Sound and Music CIC, Researcher Vancci Wahn, Textile Artist Jade Burton, Filmmaker Tom Hobden, Technologist Dave Norton, Workshop Assistant Jude Bowden. Special thanks to Youth Music, Suffolk County Council’s Creative Project Fund, Sudbury Arts Centre, Gainsborough Silk, Sudbury Silk Mills and the Ministry of Education, Taiwan.