Involved in year 2020,2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, 2026

Marieke van Mieghem graduated from the Academy of Visual Arts Tilburg as a first degree teacher in textiles art history and art appreciation. She taught at the Montessori Teacher Training College of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences co-founded and taught at KinderKUNSTFABRIEK and was coordinator for primary and secondary education at the cultural center ToBe in Dordrecht.

In recent years Marieke has increasingly focused on her making practice. She has exhibited at various venues including DDW 2019 and 2021 Galerie Paper Art & Design in The Hague Steinbeisser 2022 Museum De Kantfabriek and together with other linen stewards at Museum Arnhem 2024 and CODA Experience Lab 2025.

In 2020 Marieke joined the Shared Stewardship of The Linen Project where she felt her love for materials sensitivity to materials work with others and teaching background come together. These experiences led her in 2022 and 2023 to the master’s program “From Farm to Fabric to Fashion” at the Polimoda Institute in Florence. There she taught about flax approaches to the material processing the freedom to experiment and the value of these processes in interpersonal contact.

From spring 2023 to summer 2025 Marieke participated together with four other linen stewards in a research project on the transferability of Linen Stewardship. This resulted in a Linen Stewards handbook.

What does the stewardship mean to you?

Linen stewardship is for me an important source of inspiration and has greatly helped me develop further in my work as an artist material researcher and teacher. Growing a small plant actually standing with your feet in the soil and the task of collectively caring for the crop connects me with others with nature and through that also with myself. This feels extremely valuable in a world where the fabric of society is under so much pressure and we are often driven by high expectations efficiency and output. It may be idealistic and it certainly requires work to believe in it and persevere but I see that it is very inspiring for many people and brings a lot of joy and pleasure.

Relevant specialisation 

Material research, experiment, art, education, guidance, shifu weaving, kami-ito, botanical dyeing, weaving and spinning

Things I would like to learn

I am interested in how design imagination and collaboration can emerge from togetherness. How to make use of everyone’s strengths and possibilities and ensure that everyone feels heard and seen is something I want to continue learning.

Marieke van Mieghem 
Bunnik
mariekevanmieghem.nl
@mariekevanmieghem