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Gallery | Selected Work Contemporary Community Textile Artist
Derbyshire

Individual & Collaborative Pieces

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Introducing the launch of the Coventry Banner Project, a large-scale collaborative textile installation developed with communities across Coventry.

'Happiness is...
being understood without saying a word.'

Lastlemon.com,

2014

Welcome to my gallery. I’m Amanda Haran, a contemporary community textile artist living and working in Derbyshire. My practice brings together participatory textile projects, place based installations, and collaborative making with communities across Amber Valley, Derbyshire, and the wider Midlands. Long term connection to people and landscape underpins everything I do.

My work sits within contemporary socially engaged art, using textiles as both material and method to explore place, participation, and collective experience.

'The other view that I like to subscribe to is that there are still a place for contingency, that there are still a place for small groups of thoughtful, committed citizens to make a difference.'

Rutger Bregman concerning the power of small groups, 2025

My current work centres on growing flax and reviving regional linen heritage through socially engaged, place based practice. As a carbon literate artist, I use low impact, nature sensitive methods, working carefully with land, materials, and time to prioritise sustainability, reuse, and ecological responsibility. Earlier projects explored similar themes of place, care, and collective making, using different materials and forms in response to context and community.

Creative listening is at the core of my practice. I shape projects that respond to lived experience and public context, supporting insight, shared understanding, and reflection through participatory art. Listening, adaptation, and dialogue guide each project as it develops in response to people and place.

My personal and collaborative works create space to consider experience, vulnerability, and change, strengthening an ethical foundation from which others are invited to contribute their own stories and creativity.

Amanda Haran preparing a flax growing plot in her front garden in Riddings, Derbyshire, as part of the Riddings Community Flax Project, now in its third year

Preparing a flax growing plot in my front garden in Riddings, Derbyshire, as part of the Riddings Community Flax Project, now in its third year | .Contemporary Community Textile Artist Derbyshire

For me, flax is more than a material. It is a connective thread linking people, place, and industrial history, offering a way to re engage with overlooked narratives through slow, collective processes. Influenced by Stephen Willats, Ursula K Le Guin, and Harriet Goodall, I see art as a social model that nurtures care, connection, and shared responsibility.

While many community textile projects focus on participation alone, my practice extends into reflection, evaluation, and responsive development. Projects are shaped by dialogue, feedback, and lived experience rather than fixed outcomes. Through long term collaborations, workshops, and installations, I create frameworks that enable shared learning, making, and reflection over time.

This gallery presents a curated selection of images showing process, participation, and the living human and ecological networks that support the work.

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