The work submitted for the PhD by Publication is evidence of my investigation into the significance of textiles as an aesthetic experience within a socially engaged form of material practice, some of which involves other people.
Social engagement has been an active and deliberate agent in the aesthetic transformation of functional material objects in two of my publications called The Sleeping Bag Project and You Are the Journey. A third publication is a co-edited book called Outside: Activating Cloth to Enhance the Way We Live. A range of essays by artists, curators and writers discloses previously unwritten commentaries on community initiatives that probe a range of empathetic modes of investigation that explore meaningful spaces for participation. I have come to recognise that a proactive attitude towards collaboration is evident in all three publications. It is exemplified by my approach to co-orchestrating the Outside book and by an eagerness to work with others to advance the concept of the transformative power of cloth within the live arena for socially engaged textile practices today.
The relations between an aesthetic transformation and socially engaged practice was implicit in Rozsika Parker’s seminal text The Subversive Stitch first published in 1984 providing an analysis of textiles within social history. At the beginning of work on this PhD my relationship with the book was complex and full of tensions. My perceptions of Parker’s work changed as I discovered at the very end of my thesis connections between her work and mine that enable a deeper understanding of the need in my socially engaged textile practice today for the kind of aesthetics she describes historically as arising from social constraint. Consequently The Subversive Stitch has now re-appeared with value as a touchstone for my work in a contemporary context. 
The thesis then discusses examples of the outcomes of practices by other artists and considers the attention given to visual aesthetics within socially engaged practices. Ideas are developed to suggest how the aesthetic dimension of textiles may enhance principles of communal giving as an innovative strategy stretching beyond the coalition government’s Big Society agenda presented in 2010. Examples from investigations of textiles in museum archives including embroideries created by internees within Second World War prisoner-ofwar camps in the Far East are also examined. The aesthetic dimension of the embroideries carries significance through the vulnerable context in which they were created, as a potent series of statements involving cloth in action.
In contemporary Britain, I have shown how such everyday objects as sleeping bags and travel tickets can capture the imagination by creating a connection with participants, when they may not have been consciously seeking an insight separate from the functionality of these objects. Nevertheless, an aesthetic gesture is surreptitiously tucked away. This has created a hybrid form of social engagement that can move fluidly between private and public spaces. The social engagement also involves processes of interaction and exchange with the object in the presentation of an active relationship with the object that is both seen and unseen.

Cloth in action : the transformative power of cloth in communites

This paper explores research undertaken as part of the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project: Co-producing CARE: Community Asset-based Research & Enterprise, which worked with community groups to explore how craft, as a practice and a methodology, might promote community agency and build assets through co-creative making, learning and sharing. It draws on a range of discourses, theories and practices from social design and design thinking, to ethnography, embodiment, cooperation and community agency.

The Making Affect: a co-created community methodology

: This study investigates the role of experiential learning of handmade crochet for higher education students of the Home Economics Department, Faculty of Women, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. Learning through experience is built on increasing exper - tise to improve learning output, unlike traditional learning, where students are passive listeners, and lecturers oversee the process. The crochet experiential learning curriculum concluded with the “Handicrafts Festival,” where talented students used their learning outcomes and developed their soft skills by concentrating on their talents and creative thinking techniques. The festival lasted for three days, including practicing the art of yarn graffiti in the faculty’s yard and exhibiting students’ handicraft products. The crochet experiential learning curriculum was evaluated through three questionnaires: for students that accomplished studying the whole curriculum, for students who participated in the handicraft festival, and for the audience. Experiential learning changes students’ cognitive structure, attitudes, and skills since it is based on students’ intense ambition to succeed. The study showed that including yarn graffiti in the crochet experiential learning cur - riculum improved their communication and collaboration skills. Utilizing yarn leftovers, samples, and incomplete crochet projects in yarn graffiti configurations achieves sustainability. The study found that the students who participated in yarn graffiti got the most out of the crochet experiential learning curriculum. At the same time, it should focus more on studying the

/pdf/yarn-graffiti-in-the-handicraft-experiential-learning-to-1maeaqz5.pdf

Yarn Graffiti in The Handicraft Experiential Learning to Improve Students’ Soft Skills and Attain Sustainability

Within the shifting territories of craft practice, the handmade has become a relational form of contemporary activity that transforms our understanding of place through a hands-on minds-on process of collective making. The conceptual significance of craft is activated through a chance encounter with the hand-made in daily life 
The point of departure for this paper was a conference Outside: Activating Cloth to Enhance the Way We Live held in the winter of 2012 at the University of Huddersfield, the conference convened by the authors attempted to explore: 
Cloth’s value, relevance and impact on societies today, recognising the constantly evolving fields of expression, often sited beyond art mediated contexts, to bring a fresh encounter with the latent possibilities of cloth, its ability to bear witness to events, often the visceral evidence of peoples’ lives. 
A recently published book of the same name develops the ideas and experiences a step further. This paper is the next stage, bringing a line of continuity from our previous enquiry. During the paper we will consider with renewed interest the collective activities and the confluence between crafting, social engagement, volunteering and the realms of education and creative practice that we have both experienced first-hand. We hope this paper will be a useful signpost for exploration of this rich area of practice that we hope to extend to a co-curated exhibition in the year 2016/17. 
What will be revealed will be the voice of practitioners’ collectively exploring cloth’s potential as a metaphor for consciousness, carrier of narrative, and catalyst for community empathy and cohesion. We will discuss the events and projects that we have experienced, created, or participated in. This will include work by the American artist Jennifer Marsh, whom we have collaborated with since 2008, through her developing Dream Rocket Project. This global collaborative crafting project exemplifies the active process of inclusive community engagement. We will also present colloquial, intimate reflections as portrayed in Betsy Greer’s anecdotes and reflections on the hand-made and use of the internet and on-line crafty sharing. We will explore Claire Barber’s insights into cross-cultural craft exchange during her recent involvement in an intergenerational project conducted in partnership with Professor Lesley Millar. These collective visual narratives will inform our perception of Craft in Unexpected Places and bring visibility to a selection of craft interventions through a visual juxtaposition of evocative photography inviting the delegates to take an active part in making links between the wide reaching possibilities for craft based practices and the social

/pdf/craft-in-unexpected-places-2qe6vt1f2j.pdf

Craft in unexpected places

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