The Great British Sewing Bee’s Patrick Grant brought a buzz to Ladybridge High School when it hosted an “Endangered Crafts Day”. The event, by the Comino Foundation and Heritage Crafts, aimed to inspire and inform young people about traditional crafts — which are in danger of being lost but are key in today's world. Blackburn-based clothes maker Patrick , who has clothed film stars and royalty, and has his own Savile Row business, stressed the importance of ethical and sustainable clothing to an audience comprised of pupils from Ladybridge High School, Bury’s Derby High School and St Gabriel’s RC High School, Abraham Moss Community School, and Rochdale’s Falinge Park High School.
Patrick is the founder of Community Clothing and judge on BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee. Community Clothing was established with a simple goal; to sell great quality affordable clothing and by doing so sustain and create great jobs in the UK’s textile making regions. Today they work with 28 partner factories, including spinners, weavers, knitters, dyers, finishers, embroiderers, textile printers and garment makers, including in Lancashire, He instilled a particular sense of pride in the Ladybridge pupils by revealing that trainers were invented in Bolton 140 years ago, and that the trainers he was wearing were made in Bolton by Norman Walsh, at the town’s one surviving trainer factory.
He said: “Bolton made the coolest running shoes in the world. Shoes that were won by Bo.