Friday 8 February 2013

Website Workshop Writeup

Our research project and series of workshops we are running with Bolton at Home made the news section on the University of Bolton website:
http://www.bolton.ac.uk/MediaCentre/Articles/2013/Feb2013-3.aspx

Craft and Smart Materials Workshop

This week we (myself and Rachel McLean) hosted the first of our craft and smart materials workshop in Bolton. We were awarded funding from Bolton at Home to run these workshops within the area of Breightmet in Bolton which has been identified as a fragmented and deprived community. 

This workshop was held at Breightmet Community Church and the craft group is led by the wonderful Jen Gilmore who also runs Stitch Me Lane fabrics (and coincidentally was a participant within my PhD interviews).    


We brought in technician Garry from the Alternative Technology Centre in Hebden Bridge to introduce smart materials to the group and helped participants create their own soft circuits. He brought in a whole bag of tricks including conductive threads, sewable LED's and LilyPad Arduinos.

 Some of the materials we used on the day

(sorry for some of the blurry pics it was a very sunny outside and I took a couple of action shots)

We had an extremely fun and rewarding day which is hopefully a sign for good things to come. Here is one of the participants Caroline who worked a soft circuit LED into bird patterned fabric. She was so pleased with what she had created (as you can see in the picture) and I hope I get the opportunity to interview her next time.

 
We have a few more workshops already booked and more to come so watch this space to keep up to date with further developments.