Months have elapsed since my last post. After writing it I’d resolved to post more frequently here, finding social media a far too fast paced and noisy space. Perhaps this now becomes a resolution for 2024.
The past year has been one of changes in my working life and adjusting to the end of the hyperfocus of PhD thesis writing. Highlights have been three community-based textile heritage projects here in Bradford, Repair, Together with Needle and Thread and Lost Mills and Ghost Mansions; my Arts Council England DYCP project Extraction; the first of a series of heritage events in Ghent (Leeds and Tilburg to follow in 2024) using textile history to connect with community, co-creation and making; teaching, both online on my Stitching Connection course and at West Dean College, The Lund, and Museum Dr Guislain, Belgium; development work for two conferences in 2024, focussing on textile cities and refugee stories. Finally in October I was delighted to begin a one year postdoctoral ESRC fellowship at The Open University, Crafting Resilience, which gives me time to disseminate work from my thesis and to develop some new research proposals.
This year also marked ten years of my daily stitching practice, my Stitch Journal. The daily stitching continues, my current piece shown above. Once again, I find the rhythm of hand stitch, the familiarity of my choice of materials and the reflective space it offers me, a significant part of everyday and working life. 2024 will bring more piecing and patching together using textile as a thread running through plans for projects, developed over time, which will hopefully begin in 2025.
I’m hugely grateful to readers, publishers, funders and commissioners, mentors and mentees, workshop and community participants for continuing to support my work and look forward to sharing more in due course.