Digital transformations, amateur making and the revitalisation of traditional textile crafts
- Submitting institution
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Nottingham Trent University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 22 - 696229
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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- Book title
- Design roots: culturally significant designs, products, and practices
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN
- 9781474241816
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- December
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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C - Fashion and Textiles Research Centre
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This text is one of three chapters authored and co-authored by Twigger Holroyd in this major edited collection. The book is a key output from Design Routes, a three-year AHRC-funded project exploring the role of design in revitalising culturally significant designs, products and practices. The project employed Twigger Holroyd as full-time RA from 2014 to 2016. The book is collaboratively edited by the research team, with Professor Stuart Walker acting as lead editor, and includes invited chapters from experts around the world.
A large body of literature focuses on the commercialisation of traditional crafts and the contribution of such practices to economic and social development. The role of non-commercial stakeholders in revitalisation is largely unexamined, despite the recent surge of interest in amateur craft. A similar gap can be identified in the growing literature examining the ways in which craft activity is enabled by digital tools and platforms; traditional practice is largely overlooked. In this chapter Twigger Holroyd addresses these gaps, drawing together her expertise in amateur textile craft with the knowledge of traditional and local practices developed during the Design Routes research. It builds on arguments developed in her paper, ‘Design for “domestication”: the decommercialisation of traditional crafts’, presented at the European Academy of Design conference in 2015.
The chapter draws on semi-structured interviews with three expert textile makers, combined with Twigger Holroyd’s own professional experience as a designer-maker and workshop facilitator. A case study, which emerged from one of the interviews, focuses on one amateur maker’s digitally-enabled engagement with a specific local tradition: the two-coloured geometric knits associated with the Scottish town of Sanquhar. Twigger Holroyd’s argument, for the potential importance of amateur activity in revitalisation initiatives, has significance for both academic design research and practical design practice.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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