I noticed the Future Labs latest term for how we are organising ourselves as consumers/citizens is The New Rurbanites - how cities are becoming more local and sustainable and we are starting to draw on 'rural' themes that are more human and intimate.

They then quote the wonderful Paul Hawken, a social and environmental activist, "We can no longer import our lives in the form of food, fuel and fundamentalism. Life is home-grown – and always has been. So is culture. And so, too, are the solutions to global problems".

Paul Hawken's book Blessed Unrest, is on my reading list, and its about the massive worldwide movement for environmental and social change. Hawken argues that collectively these groups make up the largest movement on earth - one that has no name, no leader and no set location but that is largely ignored by politicians and the media.

As designers, this is the territory we need to apply our valuable skills to, something that design writer John Thackara is always going on about.

Im off to a Facilitation Camp tomorrow to learn how to use facilitation skills to hopefully learn how to do this. The event is describe as being for "anyone who trains, consults, works with groups of people, or who wants to make things happen, build sustainable communities, lead, work better, cultivate the tools and skills needed to get to where you want to get to.... or to help others get to where they want to get to".

I'm very keen to see if there will be many other designers at this event and to really begin to learn skills to activate change through my teaching, working with the collective and particularly the exciting project we have planned with bricolage to take place in Brixton Market. Watch this space!

The Harvest Class from Angus Booker on Vimeo.

I'm planning a trip to Australia in October, where I will be giving a lecture and a few workshops at various places. I'm most excited to be going down to Melbourne to give a workshop and talk at my great friend Emma's new venture,Harvest Textiles.

They produce a lovely range of hand printed goodies and have also set themselves up as a studio offering classes in all sorts of craft and making activity.

As designers, they believe in encouraging others to find their own creativity and are happy to share their expertise and knowledge. It is so great to see designers operating in this way. For me, as a designer, teaching others about craft or textile techniques enriches my own processes and allows me to also be grateful for the skill and expertise I do have.

They have also just produced a little film, that shows their print studio with a class going on. This is such a great little film if you want a to get a glimpse into what its like in a print studio! It beautifully captures what I am always waxing lyrical about - the processes and rhythms of a craft technique...the wonderful, thoughtful movements of people as they print, or cut out a stencil or wash up their screen.

I have spent many hours in a print room and this film lets you into that space. It can be a very private experience, as you become very absorbed in your task, while also being quite social, as all the different users of the space move about. Delightful!

The quilting theme continues as I ended up down at Brixton Market yesterday, teaching three 7 year old girls how to do running stitch, at the launch of the new Skillshare Shop, part of the Transition Town initiative in Brixton Market.

I took some of my favourite old patchwork pieces I own, as inspiration, but we just stuck to a simple running stitch and learning how to use a needle and thread.

The Skillshare shop is run by Hannah Lewis, a designer who, like me, believes in the value and importance of design skills and knowledge in creating social change. She has worked tirelessly with her Remade in Brixton initiative and has now found a semi-permanent home in the Market to run all sorts of workshops in re-skilling.

Afterwards, I actually ended up serendipitously re-reading Emily Campbell's paper titled You know more than you think you do: design as resourcefulness and self-reliance, part of the RSA's Design & Society initiative.I have talked alot about this paper before, but it is a really well-written contextualisation of the issues.

Campbell talks of the need for designer's to redefine themselves to help make people more resourceful, without lowering the skill and threshold that defines a designer. Her definition of resourcfulness includes being able to think on your feet, to make something out of little or nothing, and having a confidence that comes with knowledge - a range of skills that are at your disposal.

One part of me thinks that it is not just designer's who have these 'resourceful' skills - I've seen plenty of people down at the Brixton Skillshare shop who are teaching a range of skills from how to build a solar-stove to making jewellery and they are not designers. But, I think that what Campbell is referring to is a range of skills that are part of a designer's professional repertoire - this is where we are different. If these skills are needed more in society, and making more resource-depleting products is becoming less of a viable activity, then this new role for designer's makes sense. I know I want to stay in a job!

Also, I saw the way these 7 year old girls struggled to stay focused on a simple new skill that they had learnt - using a needle and thread. If we do not continue to pass on these valuable skills, people will not develop the range of skills that allows them to feel confident with materials and processes and to be active rather than passive citizens.

The show is up finally after many frantic moments. I also managed to produce some text to go along side the work - it is actually some of the blog entries from here, as a sort of progress diary.

As I sent out invites and information explaining what the work was about, I realised there were two key questions I have been unconsciously trying to answer (or ask!):

How can digital textile print be used to enhance and celebrate old heirloom fabric pieces?

Can a 'digital craft' process, using sustainable base cloths, help to reinvent the traditions of quilting and patchwork?

Regarding the first question, the large hanging panel above the samples was addressing this - I had scanned in pieces of fabric that I cherish - an old half finished shirt made from a Liberty fabric by my godmother in the 1970's, an old fabric from my mum which I had tried to make into a bag when I was 19, and some tiny patchwork hexagons from someone's unfinished quilt I found in a market. These were all enlarged and simply digitally printed onto a large panel of organic cotton/hemp.

By enlarging these tiny fragments of memory and resourcefulness, I wanted to give them the attention I feel they deserve.

This could be used for clients who wanted to re-invigorate old heirloom pieces, and could be applied to cushions, quilts or any household textiles.

In regards to a new type of 'digital' quilting, I only managed to produce samples or 'fabric sketches' for how this process could be used to produce quilts, but it has loads of potential....maybe my next residence can follow this up!

The show is on until July 23rd.

The last few days of finishing the samples, with help from the lovely Yemi in the studio.

Looking at all the samples together, the 'quilting' theme becomes very evident. I have been reflecting on this, and my obsession with hand stitching, and particularly the 'kantha' stitch, which is a running stitch used in India, to quilt many layers of old fabric together.

There is something so satisfying about taking many random elements - fragments of different types of fabric, each with their own personal meaning - and to layer them together through a simple, meditative running stitch. The new textile formed is heavy in weight and there is something so reassuring about this - it has been so neatly embedded and brought together. The many 'fragments' have been brought together, so there is a new 'whole'.

As Lucy Norris says in the TED Upcycling Textiles book of essays (due to be published soon): "Quilting and patchwork are techniques that involve the destruction of objects which hold within them emotional attachments to specific people, places and moments in time, and stitching them into newly rearranged wholes, preserving certain memories while radically re-contextualizing them".

Its also the ultimate in 'zero waste cutting'! Using quilting shapes and templates is so efficient and there is something so lovely about using these age-old techniques that have been specifically developed to encourage resourcefulness.

More thoughts to follow, but I will be trying to write some of them up to go along side the samples at the show.

Exhibition launch, next Wednesday 7th July at Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Art. All welcome!

AA2A 2010
Joyce Addai-Davis, Lydia Goldblatt, Florian Roithmayr, Clara Vuletich and Emma Wieslander

8 – 23 July 2010

Opening Wednesday 7 July, 5.00 – 7.00pm

Camberwell Space, Camberwell College of Arts

45 - 65 Peckham Road London SE5 8UF

Opening times: Monday to Friday 9am - 6pm

Camberwell Space is pleased to present exciting new work by artists created during their Artists Access to Art College Scheme (AA2A) at Camberwell College of Arts and Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2010. Including:

Joyce Addai-Davis is a weaver who set out as a part of her residency to weave a garment layplan with a specially engineered textile design on a Jacquard Loom. She enlisted fashion designer Emma Hamshare who works engineering laser-cut designs to garment pattern pieces. ‘What you see is a scaled model of the resulting garment pieces orbiting each other. The layplan consists of the individual components of a garment laid flat. Designing the textile pattern to fit the garment perfectly reduces waste to create a streamlined method of production for custom made garments.’

Clara Vuletich is a printed textile designer and a researcher in sustainable textile design exploring ideas of material reuse, digital craft techniques and Slow design. For this project, Vuletich is further investigating her interest in combining traditional textile printing techniques such as screen and block printing with digital print technology and the possibilities of digitally printing onto recycled textiles. Using a collection of personal and valued textile fragments for design inspiration, and the title 'Fragments', the artist will explore the ‘emotional durability’ of textiles and pattern.

Latest samples I am working on, combining stitch, digital print and screen printing. I havent managed to digtally print on any recycled fabrics yet, which was the whole point of my residency! but aiming to do that in next few days.

Once the fabric has been printed, you have to steam in a large upright steamer for 30 mins. Then you have to wash the fabric and leave to dry - it is amazing how the design just comes to life once you have gone through all those processes.