Can I just say THANK YOU for joining in with this challenge? I really wasn’t sure if anyone would get involved with my KNITSONIK Back to School fun, but I figured the prompts and thinking on these themes would, at the very least, help me refocus my intentions for running my own school and maybe help me find a rhythm for being more present online, in positive ways. But thanks to you, it’s already more than that – I am loving reading your comments about your own learning goals, seeing students in the KNITSONIK School pick up the challenge to kickstart course progress, and taking time each day to share the joys of learning together. Also, I am emphatically happy with my decision to go with a mix of rubber stamps and Adobe Illustrator for making my challenge images – something about playing with stamps and inks each morning is just already filling September with happy KNITSONIK joy.
THANK YOU for helping to restore my faith in The Internet.
2. Teacher(s)
Today’s prompt is Teacher(s) and I’m surprised by how grateful and moved I feel after taking some time to reflect on some of the teachers who have changed my life. I generally hated school – especially secondary school – but, happily, I’ve had some exceptional teachers who have really shaped me as a person in enabling and healing ways. It is their energy I try to bring to my own classroom and this morning I feel incredibly thankful for their positive impact. If you are a teacher and you are reading this, know how important you are for holding the imaginations, hopes and development of the people who study with you. Also, I am sorry for how under resourced, under appreciated and under rested teachers are in our culture. Like parenting, it’s an incredibly important job that just doesn’t, in my opinion, get the love it deserves. Shout out to the teachers!
Like you, I expect, I’ve had amazing teachers and awful ones. The amazing ones were encouraging and supportive, believed in me, and advocated for my work when I faltered. When I teach I keep this at the forefront of my mind. Here are some of favourite teachers;
Teaching & Learning
During my PhD I attended a session led by Jude Carroll exploring different teaching and learning styles; learning disabilities; and cultural differences. It made me understand the kind of learner I am, and the kind of teacher I want to be. It also inspired me to want to build the most inclusive possible classroom. Jude also taught me something crucial about how communication and teaching are learned skills, that we can study and improve upon.
Rachael Matthews’ Rag School Manifesto inspired me to consider the radical teachers and schools we need for surviving the climate crisis. Her book taught me how to weave with weaving sticks but, more importantly, to be brave and inspired to learn through doing.
I love the anarchic and expanded framework for teaching and learning offered in this book, and how the park and textile waste are reframed as a workshop and working materials for making new kinds of textiles and rich social practices.
In an establishment arts education that lasted almost 30 years I am sad to say I had no Global Majority lecturers, and was taught about almost no Global Majority artists in art history lectures. This reflects a troubling and entrenched pattern of Eurocentric and colonial curricula and cannons in the UK and Ireland (where I did my undergraduate degree). This pattern is really destructive because it limits the visibility and opportunities for Global Majority artists. Also, from an educational standpoint, it must be challenged, dismantled and reworked if we want to really understand our culture and our world in all its richness and nuance. We need all the voices here and not just the ones belonging to the old white men of art!
One organisation that is working in amazing ways to redress the imbalance in established curriculums is Black Blossoms, founded by Bolanle Tajudeen. Black Blossoms offer online courses that are a powerful antidote to the colonial and Eurocentric focus of art school. My dear friend Lisa Anderson produced an amazing course – richly-researched, impassioned and necessary – that opened my eyes to many Black British artists who have been historically neglected by mainstream education. I attended this lecture a few years ago and this autumn it has been updated as Black British Art Now.
Another online art school that I loved and that got me painting and drawing again was the one run by the one and only Salina Jane. Her warm, encouraging, inclusive approach to the December Daily Draw in 2022 got me drawing and painting again after years away from it.
The exception to my Eurocentric education was the life-changing English Literature A-Level that I did at John Ruskin college, taught by Wynne Gifford. We studied the works of Alice Walker and Toni Morrison in classes that shaped my knowledge of the history of racism in America; the history of slavery; and the failures of mainstream feminism in terms of intersectionality and inclusion.
I will forever be grateful to Wynne for holding space for a group of rowdy teenagers to work through these themes in our writing. She instilled in me a passion for making arguments in essay form that has stayed with me since. I always think that my English Lit A-level was one of the most useful qualifications I ever earned, because it taught me how to advocate for my own work and my own ideas. Without Wynne, I really think I would never have been able to write the essays for my books. But also, without Wynne, I would never have grounded my feminism and world view in the works of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker.
Changing who we centre in curricula makes a world of difference.
Knit
Janine Bajus – whose work I’ve written about here and here – has created a unique, enabling and hugely inventive method for breaking Fair Isle design down into manageable steps. I have learnt so much from her about stranded colourwork; about teaching; about life. Her wonderful book – The Joy of Color – is a masterclass in itself; you can’t write a book like this unless you’re an amazing teacher.
Jen Arnall-Culliford produced intentional, collaborative and creative books under the Arnall-Culliford Techniques imprint.
I loved collaborating with her for Boost Your Knitting. Every time I want to try a new technique, it is to Jen’s books and incredibly generous YouTube channel that I turn. Clear, inviting and warm, Jen is a passionate educator. Though not producing books anymore, the same eye for detail and insatiable curiosity that make her such a brilliant teacher are present in her wonderful Pattern Scout contributions for Modern Daily Knitting.
For maximum JOY in learning, I deeply appreciate Jeanette Sloan’s workshops.
Jeanette conjures up the happiest classroom as if by magic. She always brings her precious pile of swatches; materials that appeal to us like candy; and an inspiring mood that makes you feel instantly creative: I’ve had the best fun in Jeanette’s classes and always found her bright colours and encouragement to play really restorative. I loved her dip-stitches class in Austin, Texas, and wrote about it here.
Sonik
Geoffrey Perrin lent me my first microphone – changing everything. You can hear my early recordings in this podcast, and I would never have made them without Geoffrey. He mastered my first collection of sound pieces; taught me the basics of recording and editing sounds; and got me to show work in my first sound art festival. He was a champion and an advocate of under-confidant baby Felix and may never know the enormous impact of his generosity and kindness. Thank you, Geoff.
Paul Whitty was an amazing MA tutor and PhD supervisor. Working on Sound Diaries together and moving through the stages of my PhD were formative experiences. It was a privilege to have a teacher who could inspire and share such joy in the everyday sounds of the world and, as with so many of the teachers mentioned here, also life-shaping.
I also want to put an honourable mention in here for CRiSAP – Creative Research into Sound Arts Practice. This is a department at UAL made up of several amazing teachers, but I love this department and am kept hopeful by the consistent ways in which CRiSAP keep pushing towards creating a more inclusive, diverse and socially-responsible approach to sound art. I am still processing the In The Field 2 conference they put on this July but I am so glad I went: it just left me with so much to think about.
Big up to my teachers.
Who are your favourites and why?
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I am a teacher, i thought primary school before i had my kids. I stayed home with them and then went on to teach knitting and fibers to adult for 20 years.
It wasn’t until my last year of education for my certificate in education that i found a teacher that helped me become the teacher i was. He introduce me to learning style.
I got my first job teaching in a biligual school, the kids spent half day with me in french and half day in english with my partner Wendy Strong. She was a very big influence and with her we develop indiviidual learning base on learning style.
Books played a big part in my life. Wayne Dyer’s What do you really want for your children was very inspiring. It helped me see what was important to teach my children.
I did a series of workshop with several great knitters but the one that stand out the most is Lucy Kneatby and Kate Davies (her book club). They opened up colors and free me of rules.
We are all creative in different ways in our family. My husband, my daughter and my son influence and challenge me in different ways and i love learning with them or from them.
I am retired now but i got a letter a few months back from one of my knitting students thanking me. I was very touch because she was thanking me for all the things i was hoping to pass on, yes knowledge of the technical side of knitting but also for the creative side of it.
We don’t thank people enough and they don’t have to be earth shattering teacher for that.
I realise writting this that i might benifite from and english writting course, that might be my next learning.
Hi Chantal and thank you for taking the time to share your reflections on, and experiences of, teachers and teaching!
What did you find especially helpful about “learning style”? For me, it was the joy of discovering our diversity of processing needs and styles.
Thanks for recommending Wayne Dyer! And for the reminder that we don’t thank people enough. I’m glad your student wrote to you and confirmed that you had passed on everything you’d hoped to – the technical stuff but the creative, too. I think that is always the best thing as a teacher, isn’t it? Learning that the thing we wanted to pass on has been received.
I’m a bit belatedly coming to this and reading from the start of September I love this post, Felix, partly for all the inspirational teachers you’ve linked to, most of whom I didn’t know before – Thanks! And you also got me thinking of some of my old teachers over many years Which is a little joy today. I just want to give a shout out to one, my friend Palla Who taught me colour work knitting. Palla and her husband owned the house where I & my colleagues stayed in SE Iceland for many weeks over a few years in the early 2010s While we were doing geological fieldwork; it was the house that Palla grew up in, & her family had been farmers there for generations. She told me many stories about her early childhood and the lives of her parents and grandparents’ generations, when Iceland was so different. She showed me amazing textile sewn works made by her granny and great aunts. And she taught me Icelandic colour work, which has probably been my best loved kind of knitting ever since – love me a lopapeysa . She was a primary school teacher & started me on the same thing she started the kids at school on – a knitted headband (PS, sorry for Any random capitals and Weird words, I’m using the phone Dictation to text…)
Aw I’m so glad if this post helped boost appreciation for your teachers! Hurrah for Palla – that sounds like a deep and rich learning experience and no wonder you love Lopapeysa, with so many happy associations with this gorgeous and emplaced knitting form x
Felix I hope these posts will stay on your website. We’re in the midst of a medical situation, and I know that, at the moment, I won’t be able to keep up.
Dear Mary Jane, I’m so sorry to hear you are in the midst of a medical situation – please take great care of yourself and loved ones. Yes, the posts will be here indefinitely so do not worry about missing them. Look after yourself x
This post is so inspiring. Inspiration is all around me and I am reminded to take a moment several times a day to pay attention. I am also inspired to look through my knitting and fiber book library. I have Janine’s book. It deserves spending an afternoon with.
I had a number of teachers through school who made an impression. Really, they all did. But the best ones opened doors of knowledge and experience. And their encouragement and support made me want to do better and learn more. I was a teacher for a long time. It’s hard to know what sticks or what students exactly learned or will remember, but I loved all the relationships and conversations. Even the conflicts and “fails” were interesting and memorable. Knitting-wise, a woman I met in a yarn shop decided she could teach me her amazing knitting and finishing techniques. I was so lucky. I learned the math of knitting and steeking and shaping and edge finishing and mostly not to be afraid of trying anything and not to hesitate to rip out when I’m not satisfied. Too bad she didn’t teach me to control my yarn stash, but that’s for another post! PS Love the stamps and inks!
I too loved Rachael Matthew’s Rag Rug book. A gem – small and brilliant!