Knitted Kittens Craft Club

I definitely think it's worth mentioning that I run a monthly Knitting group in the centre of Manchester. We're called the Knitted Kittens and although I initially set it up it has definitely been a collective effort between myself and a few other people. My friend Tamsyn came up with the name and another very talented friend called Sophie designs the flyer. We all bring down cake to the night and help each other learn and share techniques. We have about 15 regular members which is actually pretty good. I thought it would be worth mentioning on this blog as it has definitely been and continues to be an influence to my research. It has been running for nearly a year now and continues to get better. Being part of this group allows me to participate in my research and demonstrates how these subjects that I will be addressing are actually very personal to me. I will continue to put our monthly posters on this blog because they are always so imaginative and Sophie is so very talented.

Meeting with Prof.

Today I was lucky enough to get a meeting with Professor David Rudd, we met at the University of Bolton Research Conference last year, when he was mediating the group that I was presenting within. He spoke to me because one of his research students Michelle was writing about DIY punk scenes and there is a little bit of cross over between mine and her work. I have also met up with Michelle (who is fantastic) but is very busy at the write up stage of her thesis. I have lots of respect for both of them as not only do I like the subjects they both choose to write about they are both really easy to talk to and very grounded.  I'm very lucky that David makes time for me, being a busy Prof and all and he always keeps a look out for good references for me. I'm still waiting on a book from amazon which he suggested which looks perfect for my research, it was a little pricey but it doesn't matter as it looks really interesting and helpful:

Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose

I'm a knitter, well a maker really, that's one of my motivations to write about DIY and craft communities, because not only does it interest me but it is part of my life. I remember when I first started knitting some body asked me if my stuff was "good enough to sell", it wasn't but that question shocked me as that wasn't the reason why I did it.
I did it for lots of reasons - something to distract me when I gave up smoking, to make something that I liked and to make me feel that I was actually doing something worthwhile. The monetary value never even entered my mind and it still doesn't to be honest, sometimes it's the creation process that's important and not the finished product. I was sent this clip by someone a few months ago and coincidentally has turned up in the Research Methods lessons too. I find it very inspiring and has had a massive influence on my thesis and my craft too

Bowling Alone

Today has also been a great day as I managed to speak to my second Supervisor Dr. Rachel McLean so I thought this deserved its own post. It's always great speaking to Rachel because she is the Principle Lecturer of my school (BCT) so her time is pretty precious. She had a look through my R1 form and gave me loads of great feedback and we discussed the changes that needed to be tweeked. The subject of her thesis is very similar to mine and covers lots of the same themes, so she gave me a copy of hers to look through for inspiration. This has probably come just at the right time as I have been avoiding other people's work as I didn't want it to hold too much influence over me before I could form my own ideas, but now I am fairly comfortable with my topics and the direction I want to take I think it will be really good to take a look at her work for inspiration and a standard to work towards.
She was also really positive about my work and seemed genuinely excited by the topic, which is always good and put me in a really positive place. As well as her thesis she also lent me a few really useful books.

the first is The Virtual Community by Howard Rheingold:

This is great because we had a speaker from the University of Salford in our research session a few weeks ago called Helen Keegan, usually these sessions a little dull and slightly irrelevant to my work, but Helen was informative and entertaining and it was during this session where I first heard about this book.
The second book is called Bowling Alone: the Collapse and Revival of the American Community by  Robert Putnam. I know I shouldn't judge a book by it's cover but how awesome is that artwork

I had never heard of this book before but I am currently reading the book The Longer Long Tail by Chris Anderson and on the train home he used the phrase 'Bowling alone' in reference to this book.

The Creative Process and Productive Days

Such productive days like this are rare, I'm not one of these people who can sit down and write without thinking much, it's a constant battle and I have to work really hard. I do get envious of those people who can knock out thousands of words off the cuff to a reasonable standard but I really have to give it everything I've got. I've been speaking to a few well informed people about this and they made me feel better by explaining that it's what the learning process is about, by pushing yourself to your limits and how writing a PhD thesis is a very personal experience, it's about what you can get out of it.
It reminds me of this great interview I saw with the lovely Nick Cave talk about the creative process and how he has to work really hard too, I couldn't find the exact interview but I found one where he says something very similar, which is kind of cool because it must be something that he thinks about a lot. It's good to know that people I respect and admire aren't just naturally talented and they have to give everything they have too.

Anyway like I said days like this are rare, I managed to write a lot of quality work (if I do say so myself) and I managed to get my head around concepts that I have been struggling with for a while.
My academic background is in English literature, as despite writing being a bit of a challenge I do love books, reading, and theory, I also find it very fairly natural to form opinions on subjects and develop ideas. My literature background has also given me the capabilities to apply certain critical concepts to other disciplines. Today I had some theoretical breakthroughs on postmodern theory, I have always had a good understanding of the concepts that surround this theory but there have been certain mental links that I had struggled with, happily today I managed to get over some of those barriers and write quite a lot about Communities and Fragmentation.
I've still got a long way to go but it's always nice to have days like this

Thesis Title

From Practice to Purpose: Embracing Technology for Creative Communities.

Allow me explain my title a little - 'From Practice to Purpose' refers to the term Communities of Practice (Wenger, 2002) this is where a group of like minded people come to together to share and practice their ideas. 'Purpose' refers to what purpose these groups/communities come together, this research will hopefully explore reasons other than monetary gain for example collaborative learning or to simply make the world a better place.
Although I will attempt to explore physical creative communities, I will also be looking at online communities and the notion of place within society. The domain that this research falls within is the Creative Industries, focusing on craft and DIY ethics

My Thesis

This is the first post of my PhD blog, I've decided to keep this blog to document what's going on in my thesis, to have an online space so I can refer back to it at a later date and have a nice place to refer my potential interviewees. As my thesis will be referring to lots of different aspects of social media it makes sense that my thesis should reflect that and be integrated within an online community.