Hello! We are Katie Pollard, an artist and natural dyer and Hannah Kirkham, a garment-maker, based in Newcastle upon Tyne.
We have joined forces to explore different approaches in the UK to local textile production that puts people and the planet at the centre (see our previous blog post – for more info!) We are both feeling a real buzz of excitement around this project. It feels like an incredible opportunity to learn from, share with and connect to a growing community of people working in this area.
So how did this all come about?
In order to explain this, it’s probably useful to know a little more about what we do and why we do it, and how our ideas of how we would like to develop our work in the future have led us into this collaboration.
First up.. here’s a little intro to our individual practices and what working together means to us.
I am an artist and natural dyer based in Newcastle upon Tyne. My practice involves researching and experimenting with dye plants and processes and creating natural dyes and inks for use with natural fibres and materials. I grow dye plants, forage local plant material and collect food waste for this purpose.
I like to explore ways that natural dyeing can be used as a tool for boosting wellbeing and connecting people to each other and their local environment. I’m interested in creating space for community-building, skill-sharing and conversation, and allowing time to connect to and observe slow natural processes and seasonal change.
Hannah is a garment-maker based in Newcastle upon Tyne. In 2016 she founded Scout & Rae where she hand-makes clothes, in small batches, using natural fabrics.
Practising crafts alongside other people and sharing skills, knowledge and ideas is a joy for Hannah and she is interested in exploring the potential of collective working and community to create alternatives to the dominant capitalist and extractive systems.
Like a lot of makers, we both also work part-time and Hannah’s job as the For Solidarity Project Manager at The NewBridge Project, is all about the importance of working with other people, making connections and nourishing networks. In fact it is how we initially met, at a local meeting of like-minded groups, sharing stories of their current and future projects.
It’s telling how much the topic of ‘working with others’ comes up in conversation, more specifically, the benefits of working with others. It is something that feels central to this project, at various scales.
To help us think about this, we’ve been using the analogy of looking at a landscape through a camera and starting off by focussing on a very small area and gradually zooming out.
At the most ‘zoomed in’ end of the scale is us wanting to work together.
While this research is something we have both individually been interested in doing for a while, we agreed that tackling it alone is not something either of us wanted to do. When we considered why this is, there were a lot of things that came up. We have talked about the positives of working together: the different energy, the courage, the motivation and accountability, and of course the downsides of working alone: that ‘stuck in your own head’ feeling, the overwhelm of not knowing where to start and simply feeling isolated.
If we zoom out on our situation a little bit, we are interested in how our creative work fits into our local context.
We want to make alongside others and respond to, and integrate with, our local environment and community. When chatting about why this is important to us, it comes down to value and meaning. There is a deeper satisfaction working in this receptive and connected way; we can begin to understand the needs of our community, how our work might support these needs and, in turn, how we might be supported.
And there are many ways this ‘value’ can be considered. For example, I am really interested in the more intangible aspects of working with others. I love that growing and making together tends to create a space for conversation, and that this often happens with greater ease if people have an activity to work on together. What intrigues me about creating a space for people to come together, is this sense of possibility and potential. What could happen?
Zooming out again, we consider things at a regional scale…
There are two main strands that we have talked about that are of interest to us. The first is the cross pollination of community working – how different community groups, artists and makers in the North East, support and learn from each other and where we fit into this picture. The second is the consideration of how a clothes making, dyeing and growing endeavour may fit into the wider local context in terms of what specific textile based regional infrastructure there is and how we can begin to tap into this and support it.
Zooming out even further and we start to think about how we can connect with, learn from and support others working in this field nationally and internationally…
Although we are only at the beginning of this journey, the generosity and enthusiasm we have received from people we have contacted across the UK, has been incredibly encouraging. It feels like there is a real focus on sharing rather than competition, and an awareness of being part of a bigger picture.
We’ve got a few trips planned over the next couple of months to meet some of these people and we’ll be sharing our learnings on here too. Thanks again for reading this!