Menu
Making Place
This site-specific workshop will use the local landscape as inspiration for textile-based work. Observing the marks and mending of the landscape we will consider how these illustrate the histories and making in the area.
Using found marks to inspire simple stitches, local dyes collected around the studio, piecing and hand stitch we will explore ideas that map and evoke a quality or sense of place informed by this unique location.
Claire’s long experience of practice as research through developing and delivering creative health and cultural heritage projects with multiple communities in the UK and Europe will be shared during the sessions. There will be opportunities to share practice and ideas as we stitch together.
This workshop is suitable for all levels of experience and will include time spent inside and outside the studio.
Dr Claire Wellesley-Smith is an artist, writer and researcher based in Bradford, West Yorkshire, UK. Claire has spent over twenty years building a practice across visual arts, academic research, writing and curation. Her socially engaged projects are often long-term engagements alongside communities in former areas of industrial textile production in the UK and Europe, employing textiles as a medium to carry stories, heritage narratives and the geographies of making. In a creative health and cultural heritage context she has fostered connections with a wide network of organisations, individuals, and heritage institutions. Her textile books Slow Stitch (2015) and Resilient Stitch (2021) remain influential in the field. Recent projects include The Synthetic Revolution, a major curatorial project for the British Textile Biennial and Connective Material at Museum Dr Guislain, Belgium. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in Geography and Environmental Studies at The Open University.
https://www.clairewellesleysmith.co.uk/
https://layer.si/bien/en/kr/rethread2026/
Photo of artworks: Michael Wicks, Workshop photo from Bronte project archive
Portrait: Carolyne Mendelsohn
