Eco Conscious Practice
Craftivism
Merseyside Etsy Team: Paper House Hunting
From the Archives – 2016:
“On Saturday 18th June the Merseyside Etsy Team will be filling the city with craft and asking people to come #PaperHouseHunting with them in aid of the Whitechapel Centre. Using shared skills, team members will be creating papercut and origami houses bearing the hashtags #MET and #PaperHouseHunting, which will then be hidden around Liverpool on the afternoon of the 18th. MET members will share clues as to the hiding places of the paper houses through their own social media (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter). Use the hashtags, spread the word, look for the houses – and if you can afford to donate a little money we’d be super grateful! The Mersey Etsy Team is a 450 member strong team comprising artists, designers and makers in the Merseyside area, all of whom sell via craft website Etsy. Huge thanks to Hannah (of Etsy shop JoyfulArray), and Carol of (of JackdawandJay) for their origami and papercutting expertise.” From Merseyside Etsy Team Fundraising page.
As part of Merseyside Etsy Team, I took part in a fundraising craft event ‘Paper House Hunting’. Members donated to The Whitechapel homeless charity to join in the craft party where we brought and shared cakes and drinks before making origami paper houses. We distributed the houses around Merseyside with stickers attached explaining to person who finds them their purpose and a link to donate to Whitechapel. The awareness message was spread though social media with the hashtag #papaerhousehunting. I was really pleased when my houses were found and the person engaged with the project by sharing the found house on Twitter. Team leader Becka Griffin was also interviewed about the campaign on BBC Merseyside radio station. The day was great fun, and a success in terms of fundraising as we raised £207.43 for The Whitechapel Centre.
Mindful Crochet Workshops
I have added this NEW workshop to my website as it has become clearer in recent years the benefits to wellbeing crafting has on us. I have personally found that when I am crocheting in my own time, I find it relaxing, satisfying and mood boosting. I enjoy the feel of yarn in my hands, and the repetitive nature of the craft, and seeing the stitches quickly appearing, giving that sense of achievement that I am capable of making something. A couple of years ago I made a crochet lavender scented and coloured amigurumi dinosaur, using bamboo yarn. I wrote a post that you can read below on the dinosaur and how I use it as a grounding tool when I am feeling anxious.
https://amandajonesartanddesign.wordpress.com/2021/07/02/41/
Crochet Now magazine published an article in collaboration with Mental Health UK to promote mental wellbeing. In the article they highlight how various designers have used craft to help them in times of illness.
“I started crocheting five years ago when I became chronically ill and couldn’t do most of the things I used to be able to do. I often say that crochet saved my life, and while it may sound dramatic it really did help because I was no longer feeling as depressed. It stopped me focusing on all the things I couldn’t do, and I was now focussing on something that I could do. I also had something productive and creative to show for my day.”
https://craftworld.com/cms/crafting-calm/?fbclid=IwAR08wgs0eNxiSWG9_1Va6yCxf81xwBiY66_P4nIlBMj436t5hma8QcxeDn4
Kylie Moleta, designer
Instagram: stitchedupcraft
Crafting is not going to solve all your issues, but taking time to engage in slow mindful activities such as knitting and crocheting can make a difference. UK charity Knit for Peace conducted a comprehensive survey on the health benefits of knitting (and crochet). You can read their full report, and watch their summary on ‘The Health Benefits of Knitting’ below.
Of those in poor or very poor
health,92% said knitting improved their health.
82% said knitting relaxed them,
65% of our knitters said knitting for others made them feel useful,
92% said knitting improved their mood
https://www.knitforpeace.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/The-Health-Benefits-of-Knitting-Preview.pdf
I have taken all the research and experience I have to create a new workshop, the details of which are below.
Community Mindful Creative Workshops
Are you a community group or similar? Then this workshop could be for your members.
Amanda will introduce you to the beneficial aspects of the mindful side of crafting with yarn. The session will teach you how to create a crochet item, with the focus being on the process rather than the outcome. You will experience how to engage the senses, slow the mind, reduce anxiety in the moment and feel a sense of accomplishment.
What You’ll Get Out Of It:
– Learn basic crochet stitches
– Start a project that you can take away with you
– Meet new people in a fun relaxed environment
You will receive a complete kit of everything you need, including organic cotton yarn, an ergonomic crochet hook, pattern work booklet with a short breathing exercise, and information on mindfulness. The kit also contains a vegan friendly hand cream to keep your hands from getting chapped, and an organic herbal tea bag, as a relaxing drink.
About Amanda Jones
I’m a Designer / Maker specialising in crochet and fibre arts. I sell my art and crafts as ready made pieces as well as patterns. I have been teaching crochet and creative workshops since 2010. My passion is to explore creativity and it’s benefits to health and wellbeing.
New crochet makes
My sister has just had a baby girl, meaning I have another niece. So of course I had to make her some crochet gifts. I made a ‘kitten rattle’ following the pattern by Inna Chybinova, on Instagram as @inna_chi_hm . I also made a pair of ‘tiger booties’, which I designed myself. My niece is so tiny so she will have to grow into them 🙂 For my other niece, because I can’t make for one and not the other, I made an ‘Irish woodland fairy’. I also designed this myself and plan to write up the pattern, so if you are interested in making your own keep an eye out for the pattern on my crochet patterns page.
Winter Arts Market Online
I’m taking part in Open Culture Liverpool’s Winter Arts Market Online!
This year is a little different as the market was unable to secure a location for a physical in person event, so they have gone online. There are loads of fab makers taking part with lots of Christmas gift ideas. My stall is my Etsy shop 
Shop the online directory now to discover 100+ local independent artists, makers and creators and get your Christmas shopping sorted! Buy handmade, buy local, buy beautiful!
Shop my stall here: https://www.winterartsmarket.com/cabinet-curious-crafts/
art and design blog
Art in Liverpool: Re-View Textiles ‘Hospitality Reviewed’
From the Archives: Liverpool Independents Biennial 2012 ‘Hospitality Reviewed’ project and exhibition.
Re-view Textiles is a group of artists who work with a variety of textiles and in diverse disciplines. meeting regularly to work together on exhibitions and events around Merseyside.
The latest project is an exhibition at Liverpool’s Baltic Creative, based on the theme of “Hospitality” as part of Liverpool Independents Biennial. The project started with artists being put into groups of 3 to work collaboratory. Each artist created their own piece in their own style and interpretation of the brief. When completed the works were swapped with another artist in the group, until every artist had worked on 3 pieces, adding and changing the works to finish with 3 unique pieces of art.
I worked with Wei Gan and Susan Comer, below is the outcome of the final piece I worked on.
Nomads
Wood, linen
Amanda Jones, artist 1
Wei Gan, artist 2
Susan Comer, artist 3
The first artist, Wei, printed on linen with coffee and Chinese ink drawings. The second artist Susan then deconstructed the fabric and added texture by felting the fabric. The final piece is 5 wooden ‘dolls’ dressed in the fabric sent to third artist Amanda, which she made into clothing. Each doll has a luggage tag around their neck to represent children who were evacuees during the Second World War with the name of a place they are leaving and the place that is hosting them – each of these refers to places Amanda has moved from and to in her own life. The 5th tag is slightly different from the rest as the word host is changed to home. The dolls are carrying bags made of jute twine and wood, as well as a fabric tea bag made by Wei; Amanda also added a crocheted shawl and hat to some of the dolls. The idea was that places make people and people make places.
Each artist responded to the brief in a different way, resulting in the fabric being deconstructed and changed both physically and allegorically, however it retains its original connotation, fused with the other artists input. The artists hosted the fabric and added to it by leaving their personal artistic imprint; similar to how people move around the world leaving an impact on each place they visit and in turn, how those places influence the person’s development throughout their life.
It was very interesting to see how everyone interpreted the brief – I was nervous and excited about what I was going to receive and what would happen to the piece I was sending on. We only met up at the end of the project, so we were responding to what we received, which was challenging as I felt I had to be both true to my own practice but also sensitive to the other artists in my group.
Art in Liverpool: The Black-E: Creative and Co-operative Games
My time at The Black-E is one I will never forget. I first arrived at the Community Arts Charity to volunteer on their extensive archive – chronologising the paper archive and tabulating events in an Excel database and helping to create a taxonomy from the paper archive. At this time I was grateful for the opportunity to do something useful again after months of miserable unemployment and failed attempts at finding a job after being laid off a library job that I was comfortable in.
It wasn’t long before funding came in for The Black-E’s archive to hire a part time Archive Assistant and I was lucky enough that I was asked to take on the role. It was interesting work, reading all the stories starting from the late 1960s of the games, events, the highs and lows of the developing building, as well as editing and cleaning photographs in Photoshop to upload to archive website. One of my proudest achievements was when I was able to retrieve a 16mm film negative The Black-E had created that had been lost decades earlier. It took a lot of research, emails, phone calls and creative thinking to track down the negatives to storage in London. I was able to find a company who could transfer the 16mm to DVD so that the film could be shown at The Black-E and be included in the archive.
At The Black-E no-one has just one role, everyone works on all aspects of the project, and plays together in the weekly ‘staff games’.
After the Director’s Assistant left I was asked if I wanted to take on the role as well as continuing to work on the archive. The country was still in recession and I had lost all hope of finding a job, so I accepted the offer with gratitude. I had no idea what I had taken on. Yes I did the usual work of a Director’s Personal Assistant – writing funding applications, diary management, report writing, reception duties, PR and marketing as well as minute taking. But, I also took on Volunteer recruitment/management, which led to getting to meet and working with a whole range of people from drama students, former ‘Blackie kids’, Spanish students learning English to learning disabled people looking to gain experience in the workplace. Due to lack of resources I also took on event planning. The project I took the lead on was Casus Circus’ visit. They performed their aerial show Knee Deep as well as leading workshops for professionals, local young people, and taking part in The Black-E’s weekly Staff Games. I organised their travel and accommodation as well writing the press release, working with a marketing company to advertise the performances, running the day to day of event organisation in the theatre. I also filmed the performances for the archive. Read more about the Casus visit to The Black-E here
The unique aspect of The Black-E is it’s Creative and Co-Operative Games. These games were created mainly by Bill Harpe, the charity’s Director and designed to offer an alternative way of playing from the traditional competitive games where players are pitted against each other and there are winners and losers. In creative games, players use their imagination to create works usually based on a theme. In c0-operative games players work together to achieve an outcome or to simply enjoy the act of playing. The Games have been multi disciplinary – music, movement, drama, writing, drawing and painting, photography, filming, craft etc.
During my time at The Black-E the Games where used in the weekly Staff Games whereby staff, volunteers, visiting artists and anyone else who was around would participate in creative thinking, problem solving, team building games. The games encouraged diversity and inclusion, collaboration, learning about each other, training, as well as exploring ideas for the Youth Arts Programme and Cultural Programme, health and wellbeing, right brain/left brain, social issues, current events, and self development . More about Games at The Black-E can be found on their online archive
A lot of the Cultural Programme was based around themes that pulled all the different disciplines together. One theme I remember being particularly fun was the ’43 Birthday Game’ to celebrate The Black-E’s anniversary. Bill believed that all numbers are important and rather than making a big celebration of round numbers like 40 or 45 we should celebrate the ones in between such as 43. People were invited to create a 43 artwork in any media they liked and the finished works were displayed in an exhibition in the Gallery. I played a game with Company of Friends, who were a drama group of adults with learning disabilities. We used sticky notes to stick on each other on our skin, finding enough places to ensure we used 43 sticky notes. Photographer and friend of The Black-E Paul Robinson then took photographs of the results.
I got to not only take part in games but also lead workshops for creative activities. Every Chinese New Year, The Black-E put on a celebration with the local Chinese community that included Tai Chi demonstrations, Lion Dance, art exhibitions, and workshops for the public. I led the Year of The Snake young people’s art workshop. Children were invited to draw the word snake in the shape of snakes. We ran this workshop for both the public and for the Youth Arts Playscheme and displayed the works in the Gallery.
I also a ran badge making workshop for International Women’s Day, where young people and adults came to learn how to make a badge with a design promoting women’s rights. Whilst making the badge I explained to them the meaning of the day and the gave them information where they could find more resources.
As part of the Youth Arts Programme, a group of young people chose to complete the Arts Council’s Bronze Arts Award. I was chosen as one of the people who mentored a young person in the programme. I helped a young artist research a historical artist she was influenced by and come up with ideas for her project.
Bill and The Black-E published a number of books over the years on games, community art and the benefits for health and wellbeing as well as a book with Feminist Artist Judy Chicago, which I had the privilege of working on. I wrote a separate blog post here on the experience. There is so much more I could write about from my time at The Black-E but I’ll save that for another day. If you want to find out more about The Black-E visit their website here.
words by Amanda Jones, photography by Paul Robinson
Learning to teach crochet at Liverpool craft centre Abakhan
I first started teaching crochet in 2017 after I saw Abakhan’s call for tutors on Facebook. I had facilitated arts and crafts workshops before in my job at The Black-E Community Arts Charity, but thought ‘am I good enough to actually teach?’ Turns out the Managers at Abakhan thought it was worth taking a chance on me, and soon I was creating workshop plans and coming up with new ideas for classes.
To say I felt under-qualified would be an understatement. I am a quiet person and look a lot younger than I actually am, so I worried that people wouldn’t take me seriously. I was a bag of nerves the first time I was due to teach a class of 10 women the beginners class I’d created. But, I had fully prepared my plan for the day, printed my handouts, brought my examples, and the staff at Abakhan were kind and professional, ensuring that all the tools and materials were available for the class.
The class went really well, everyone engaged enthusiastically and encouraged each other when stiches got tricky. I found that many of the participants were full of self doubt, that they wouldn’t be able to get the hang of crochet having tried in the past unsuccessfully. I was patient and understanding with them and reminded them that it wasn’t impossible, that we had all day, and they could learn at their own pace. No one left without learning the basics of how to crochet.
After that first class, I felt more confident in my ability to teach and was looking forward to the Next Steps workshop that many from the beginners class had already booked on to.
I continued teaching classes on the beginners to advanced track, as well as themed classes on Christmas, soft toys, Yarn Shop Day, and running drop in sessions on various themes throughout the year.
The classes evolved as time went on, I gathered feedback from participants on how they wanted the day to be structured, what kind of thing they wanted to learn and how many people were in each class. This last point was one of my main issues when planning classes as 10 people per class was a good number for the themed classes and more advanced workshops, however it was too many for the beginners class. Participants needed my attention one on one a lot more as they started on their crochet journey, which meant people having to wait for me to get around everyone for each step. I overcame this problem by reducing the number of participants that could book on to each class, which worked out much better as everyone was able to get the attention they needed. I also offered classes that were shorter than the usual 6 hours for those who found they struggled to attend a full day. I had many people come back for more, which I was extremely grateful for, and I enjoyed seeing people improve their skills and gain confidence in their abilities.
“I’ve done first steps, Christmas and kids workshop. They all were great and very helpful” Aga, crochet class attendee.
I have now moved to Northern Ireland and therefore no longer teach at Abakhan Liverpool, however I have set up my own classes, which you can find out more about here.
Art in Liverpool: Re-View Textiles Bed-In
Liverpool re-views its dreams for peace with textiles
From the Archives: Post originally written by Amanda Jones for Beat City Images Blog in 2010
Beat City Images (Amanda Jones and Emma Gilmour) teamed up with Re-View Textiles last week for an interactive performance artwork at the Bluecoat Bed-In. There was a lot of fabrics, chats, stitching and tea-drinking that culminated in a fantastic and diverse wall hanging.
People from all walks of life came to share their dreams of peace for the future by writing their message on a fabric letter that was then stitched onto a larger bed-sheet to create the dreamscape wall hanging. The letters spelt out the words PEACE and DREAM with every message written different from the next. One member, Susan read a ‘bed-time story’ while we all sewed, which made the atmosphere creative and relaxed.
“Re-view textiles is a group of creative people interested in textiles and living in the North West. Some of us have our own practice and are artists, designers, makers…We meet every two months very informally at the Bluecoat to exchange ideas and develop opportunities. We want to re-view the image that people might have of textiles.” Christine Toh, of Re-View Textiles.
I recorded the event and am now editing the footage together to create a DVD as a memory for all those who took part and for those who couldn’t make it on the day. Emma also photographed the Bed-In with three different cameras! Emma was very busy that day as she also went to photograph the student protest in Liverpool city centre, and is now working on combining the two events in a photographic project on love and war, so keep an eye out for that!
The Bluecoat had a webcam running throughout the day that streamed footage of the Bed-In over the internet. It can also be watched back at http://www.livestream.com/thebluecoat/video?clipId=pla_5ab713fa-d01c-4b26-be56-52ba73193107 – I seemed to appear on the camera a lot, while Emma managed to hide from it.
It was lovely to see such a diverse group of women working together on the fabrication of the hanging. The wishes and dreams for a better world included peaceful energy, end of war and respect for troops that died fighting wars they didn’t believe in, as well as simple dreams for peaceful weekends without work! My message was for peace and respect for all life including animals and humans of all shapes and sizes.
The hanging will be on display in the Bluecoat on Thursday 9th December along with other works created by participants of the Bed-In. If you can get down to the Bluecoat in the day time you can see all the wonderful pieces and get involved in dismantling the Bed, which is going to be recycled.
“The Bed-In was an opportunity for our groups to raise our voice and join others in a message for peace.” Christine Toh.
Words by Amanda Jones, photography by Emma Gilmour.
Amanda Jones Art and Design 