Textile artist encourages natural approach in classrooms

A new made-in-Manitoba curriculum encourages teachers to swap out synthetic dyes when they assign art projects and make their own colours by harvesting local plant leaves and roots.

Textile artist Ash Alberg has been practising natural dyeing — often using marigolds, black knight scabiosa and other shrubs that sprout in Alberg’s home garden plots in Wolseley — over the last decade.

Much of that period has been spent troubleshooting, given there are few resources on how to turn native species into dyes, Alberg said.

Now, the self-taught natural dye artist is ready to share findings to promote their craft and its benefits for students of all ages.

“It’s about giving kids skill-sets in learning more sustainable ways of living. It is giving them ways of expressing their identity,” Alberg said.

“It is giving kids that come from lower-income homes the ability to feel great about the clothes that they’re wearing (by learning do-it-yourself dye techniques), even though they didn’t go to the cool store and buy the most expensive things that are in style right now.”

Equipped with dried flora and a large soup pot for dyeing, the Winnipeg creative has been frequenting nursery-to-Grade 12 classrooms to run workshops since 2022-23 with funding from the Manitoba Arts Council.

Alberg recently formalized those lessons to support teachers after their visits and extend an entry point for teacher-colleagues who are keen to pilot a new hands-on activity.

This summer, Alberg sent the final product — a series of five booklets, each of which is about 100 pages long and tailored to a different age range — to public school divisions across the province.

Among the materials are relevant vocabulary, recipes and related chemistry lessons, and classroom exercises ranging from plant walks to “ice dye” projects.

The curriculum includes tips on setting up a classroom studio and health and safety.

Take-home art projects, typically in the form of bandanas that have been dyed yellow using onion skins and marigolds, are central to Alberg’s lessons. However, Alberg said natural dyeing should not simply be reserved for art classes because it’s “a junction point” for exploring all academic subjects.

The Grade 1-3 package delves into the role natural dyes have played throughout history and notes that plants, mushrooms and bugs were the only way to colour clothing about 200 years ago.

“Madder (Rubia tinctorum) has been used since ancient times across the world and was one of the earliest dyes used in the global dye trade,” states an excerpt about a plant that grows in Prairie soil and whose dried roots produce red colouring.

Alberg noted interdisciplinary workshops can also spark discussions about sustainability and the environmental impact of fast fashion — the mass production of inexpensive clothing made from fossil fuel-based dyes that are toxic.

Public school teachers can request access to the natural dyeing curricula by contacting their principals. Alberg’s guides are also available for purchase online.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Maggie Macintosh
Education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., Maggie was an intern at the Free Press twice while earning her degree at Ryerson’s School of Journalism (now Toronto Metropolitan University) before joining the newsroom as a reporter in 2019. Read more about Maggie.

Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.

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