​In a quiet front garden in Riddings, Amber Valley, flax is growing — and with it, a movement. Amanda Haran is a contemporary community textile artist whose work reimagines forgotten fibre traditions and weaves them back into everyday life, community by community.

​

Her Riddings Flax Project is a radical act of slow making and deep connection: growing, harvesting, processing and spinning flax by hand to honour Derbyshire's overlooked linen history. The work culminates in co-created textile artworks that root people in place and story, sparking conversations about land, labour, repair, and belonging.

​

Her aesthetic is shaped by artists who blur the boundaries between text, cloth and emotion — from Lorina Bulwer, Agnes Richter, and Jean-Michel Basquiat to the narrative textile practice of Alice Kettle, whose expressive stitch work echoes Amanda's own focus on storytelling and shared humanity.

​

A graduate of UMIST with ancestral links to the Horrockses weaving legacy, Amanda works with natural fibres, salvaged objects, and discarded materials, using repurpose, reuse, recycle as both ethos and aesthetic. Her practice is rooted in kindness, co-creation, and the belief that slowness can be a radical act of care.

​

With over two decades of collaboration with underrepresented communities — and training in creative therapy, mental health first aid, and psychotherapy — Amanda offers a trauma-informed, person-centred approach. She has worked nationally with Turner Prize 2021, Array Collective, Daniel Lismore, Walking Forest, and Project Art Works.

​

Amanda's work invites people to craft memory into matter, revive overlooked histories, and imagine more connected, caring futures — one thread, one neighbour, one conversation at a time.​