Education, education, education!

Continuing with the theme of threes, the third set of three, this time with a teaching slant.

Learning is a two-way street and to prove it, I have one workshop with me as teacher followed by two learning experiences with me as student to share.

Dye workshop at Purl City Yarns
A lovely session of dyeing with a very enthusiastic group of students. There was some beautiful work and some fabulous dyed yarns, unfortunately my camera battery had run out so no piccies - sorry folks.

You can catch me at Purl City next year teaching Spinning for Beginners on 16th February,
Lace Knitting on 16th March and Blank Canvas Dyeing (for making hand-dyed socks and lots of other interesting items!) on 13th April.

Arts Award

I am now qualified to teach Arts Award! This looks set to be my most in-depth teaching offering so far, with students needing to do between 40-60 hours of study experience to achieve their Bronze/Silver Arts Award qualification. It's a fantastic qualification and I'm really excited to be involved in it. Participants can take part in a wide range of arts activities and can demonstrate their learning using social media, video, audio diary etc., making it particularly appealing to young people for whom formal learning evidenced by written submissions, would be challenging. Students need no prior qualifications to take part but can achieve an accredited qualification. There's lots of information on the Arts Award website and there'll be more information soon on the main website and here on the blog, but if you'd like to know more about running Arts Award with your group/school or organisation, please do get in touch.

Craft Council Craft Club 

Craft Club is a brilliant initiative to encourage and inspire schoolkids to take part in craft activities.

To quote Craft Club's website:
"Craft Club is all about championing Craft in Schools, Galleries, Libraries, Community Centres, and anywhere else you can bring people together to pass on your craft skills!"

Julia and I spent a lovely day at Manchester Art Gallery training to run Craft Clubs. It was a brilliant day, we met some super people and had an absolute hoot making a web of knitting. We started off in a large circle, each knitting our little bit of fabric. Then we passed our work around the circle, swapped with other knitters and carried on. Our next challenge was to join up with our neighbouring knitter/s, forming us into little groups (some rather cosy depending on the length of knitting that had been achieved!). Our little groups then migrated to join with other groups and so on, until eventually we were all united by a single, interconnected web of colourful knitting.

If you'd like to set up a Craft Club with your organisation, do get in touch :-)