MY GARMENT MAKING PRACTICE

I create educational workshops and courses for garment making, facilitating individual projects for adult learners and home-educated teenagers.  

Currently I offer one-to-one tuition from my workroom in Plymouth and also Garment making workshops throughout the year at Art house, old school centre, south brent, devon. 

2019-2021 I completed a Master of Arts Degree in creative education – ‘Making Learning’.  During this time I set up a micro-business and teaching practice to develop a pedagogy for garment making in adult education.  This contributed to and supported my MA research studies.

Previously I was engaged for 10 years as a ‘hand-work’ subject teacher for South-Devon Steiner School at Dartington, where I experienced an opportunity to create an innovative garment making curriculum for teenage students aged 12 - 19 years.  This included developing accredited Learning Outcome awards for the Steiner Certificate – at levels 1, 2 and 3.

I graduated from Ravensbourne College of Art & Design (London) in 1982, setting up my own business that year at Camden Locke Market, my work specialised in designing and producing leather and sheepskin garments.  This led to supplying the designer retail trade in the UK., for the next 25 years.

WHAT – HOW – & WHY?

My educational quest is to bring professional process into the realm of home-craft garment making, whilst putting an emphasis on the word ‘craft’ rather than fashion.  My focus is with growing life-long learning initiatives for adult education.

My ethos revolves around building a relationship with each student.  This is key to individualising and developing an inspiring approach to the learning process. recognising that each person learns differently and has their own sense of creative purpose and specific motivations to learn this craft.  I feel it is useful and interesting for both facilitator and student to explore the nature of the learners quest and where this might lead!

I have a passion to improve the quality of the clothes we all wear everyday.  This can be achieved because the labour that goes into your making projects is free, enabling a transfer of costs to benefit the quality of cloth we purchase.  It is solovely to wear garments made from beautifully produced cloth, it does make a difference! not to mention the extra longevity which comes from quality cloth.

My passion is not just to share the joy I remember of learning to make as a teenager, or even the notion of passing on empowerment through learning practical making skills. –  It’s because I feel that a renaissance in home-craft / homemaker skills provides All sorts of potentials to fulfil and re-create connections with each other and re-build local communities. re-building our lost local communities creates an important function – the power to offer services outside of the big learning institutions.

CRAFT

I like this word as it recognises the qualities of process. . . It means using cloth whose provenance is known, – that this provenance has value and purpose as a political act to the maker.

Employing the word ‘craft’ makes visible the opportunity of bringing attention to the quality of aesthetic, durability and function. – What you really want your garment to do, how well it serves your purposes and how great you feel wearing it!   This is about self-expression and the experience of making!