Val Aldridge is the researcher of the exhibition "The Extraordinary: A People Called Ainu," which opened at Scotland's Perth Museum and Art Gallery in April and will run through to the end of the year. It is hoped that it will generate some interest in July when the Group of Eight summit takes place in nearby Gleneagles.
The exhibition resulted from research Val was able to do in 2003 in Hokkaido, Germany and the U.S. as a result of being awarded a Winston Churchill traveling fellowship. She applied for a fellowship after completing a city and guilds course at Edinburgh, where she chose to investigate Ainu material culture -- especially its decorative aspects -- for her thesis, and was encouraged to continue her investigations with an award for her efforts.
And that, she says, "was partly the result of my simply asking Perth Museum whether they had any Japanese/Ainu textiles."