CELEBRATED fashion and knitwear designer Joan Murray will lead the way with the first lunchtime lecture at Grassington Festival on June 28.

Her lecture will be linked to Grassington Festival’s summer exhibition, An Array of Aprons, which she helped devise.

Joan studied textiles at the Royal College of Art and is team leader of the fashion and clothing course at Craven College, winning a Craven Community Champion Award in 2013.

She said: “I am hoping my lecture and the exhibition will inspire people to start thinking differently about mundane items.

"Aprons have been in fashion from time to time, and are actually coming back into fashion, so my aim is to encourage people to think about them from different perspectives – historical, symbolic and cultural. I am hoping to stimulate discussion around people seeing the ordinary with new eyes.”

The premise for the exhibited aprons is that they must reflect the festival theme of convergence, so Joan will take two of her own hand-crafted aprons along, which reveal aspects of her own personal experiences through textiles.

The exhibition will feature Joan’s creations alongside aprons from many other notable artists, including one by John Kindness.

Other lunchtime lectures will be presented by Sue Newby from The Brontë Society, who, in this year of Charlotte Brontë’s bicentenary, will explore Charlotte’s motivations; and Emma Eaton, assistant director of Big Issue North, who will talk about the valuable work the magazine carries out.

Visit grassington-festival.org.uk for more details and tickets.