In all my workshops I aim to encourage a confidence in creativity, experimentation and having fun. There is never a right or wrong way of making something, merely exploration.
I provide examples for participants to be inspired by and a range of materials so the final works do not all look the same.
I work with a variety of clients providing craft activities for family event days, community groups, schools and young people, fulfilling the requirements of the event and supporting the participants.
I love to use a variety of materials from natural objects such as home grown willow, twigs, stones, moss and leaves, to bright colourful fabrics, ribbons, yarn, sequins, glitter, glue, sticky back plastic, string, card, recycled and scrap objects to create and decorate a wide range of crafty objects. I use natural (not living), recycled and scrap materials where possible.
Please contact me if you have a project you wish to discuss.
Showzam! Festival Workshops
I delivered 4 days of workshops to over 800 participants making and decorating Hula Hoops, Masks, Tin Stilts, Flower Sticks and Ribbon Wands for Blackpool’s Annual Festival
of Circus & Performance. Working with Sea Change Arts it was a really great few days!
Afrocats Fusion Workshops
Afrocats successfully received funding from Children In Need to develop a project which works with young women aged 11-18 mainly from African, Asian and Eastern European heritage to create Arts and Craft work to tour to Children In Care residences across the region. I am working with this group of young women delivering a series of craft workshops. They are a great group, they have made jewellery, explored different ways of using felt making purses, bags and cushions and learned to Crochet. They also came up with this poem:
Journey with us through felt, wool, thread and beads,
Everyone sitting together and working with common needs.
Creating pieces full of colour and style
Jewellery, pillows, crotchet gloves to make you smile.
Afrocats WAST Workshops
I am pleased to say that I have been invited back by Afrocats to run workshops with WAST. These workshops will focus on working with 20+ refugee and asylum seeker women aged 18+ to produce an exhibition in Manchester.
WAST is a self help group of women asylum seekers in Manchester campaigning for their right to safety and freedom in the UK. It has over 150 members. The aim of the group is to make a positive difference and improve the very traumatic and difficult lives women and children face in the asylum system, by supporting and empowering one another. WAST come together in a safe, women only environment in which the members trust and understand each other and can relax without the worry of having to explain or justify themselves.
For more information on these groups please see:
National Older People’s Day with Levenshulme Good Neighbors
I spent the day working with elders in Levenshulme as part of National Older People’s Day. It was a lovely event with great attendance. Encouraging participants to make Felt and Foam flowers that they could use as book marks or decoration.
Many thanks to Naomi Smith for supporting me!
Levenshulme Good Neighbors do great work support elders with independent living, matching volunteers with similar interests to elders whom may need assistance getting to appointments or just want a bit of company.
These simple flowers were made using pre-cut (mostly by me!) felt and foam shapes, pipe cleaners, buttons and beads. They are really bright and beautiful! Thanks also to Nancy Lavender for the inspiration.
Making Sculpture Using Nature
As part of the Fallowfield Loop Sculpture Project I planned and facilitated a series of family workshops. Participants went foraging through the woods to find different shapes, textures, and colours of materials to make their artworks. Great fun was had by all and some really brilliant artworks came out of it which stayed in the park for weeks to come!
Making Mistakes is OK!
Or ‘The importance of exploration, discovery, failure and recovery’ A Teachers Workshop.
As part of the Fallowfield Loop Sculpture Project I developed a Teachers workshop that encourages pupils and teachers to learn from mistakes and enables schools to make sculptures in their own gardens and nearby parks. I was inspired to include this in the project as some teachers I had spoken to were reluctant to craft with pupils for fear of getting it wrong. What I suggested in this workshop is that making mistakes is all part of the creative process and through exploration some of the best moments occur!