Penny in the Fabriculture Studio
If our children don’t know about our Australian animals, why would they want to save them?
Textile designer and Creative Director Penny Gale has launched Fabriculture, a new, contemporary design brand with the purpose of helping young people learn about our most endangered native species so they can be preserved for future generations.
The inspiration for Fabriculture was born at Penny’s children's playgroup. There, she discovered that the children were able to identify soft toys as foxes and rabbits, but had no idea what a bilby or a bettong was.
The fact that children were more familiar with feral species than Australia’s own, endangered wildlife caused Penny to ask the question : If our children don’t know about native wildlife, why would they want to save them?
Inspired by this question, Penny decided to educate her twin boys but soon discovered that most of Australia’s retailers sold many children’s products featuring introduced or foreign species, but rarely stocked products featuring the native species that need our help to survive.
Spotting an important gap in the market, Penny created Fabriculture to help enrich our collective knowledge of Australia’s natural heritage, bringing old and young together with engaging and thoughtful products that teach us about Australia’s native plants and animals.
Penny says: “By teaching kids about our native wildlife from an early age, Fabriculture hopes to inspire children and adults alike to take action and preserve our country’s amazing natural heritage for future generations.”
My boys
Penny completed a Bachelor of Built Environment majoring in Interior Design at QUT last century and a Diploma of Arts in Studio Textiles and Design at RMIT in 2008. She has worked as an interior architect, textile designer, buyer, graphic and visual artist across the fields of architecture, interiors, fashion and home wares in London, Melbourne and Brisbane.
Collaborations have included an exhibition of wallpapers with Wilding Wallpapers at Craft Victoria, a series of tapestries with the Australian Tapestry Workshop, specialist creative input into the re-design of Swanston Street in Melbourne with the Melbourne City Council.
More recently Penny collaborated with Project Fort Awesome and Sunshine Coast Council for the Place2Play and 1000 Play Street projects in Caloundra and her work features regularly at Surface Festival on the Gold Coast. She has collaborated with Australiana Fabrics with fashion and interior fabrics available for sale and also with Gather & Moss for an organic pyjama range. Her surface design work is also represented by Patternfield. She loves to create original watercolour collages of local Tamborine flora when she’s not twin wrangling or volunteering in her community.
