What Creative Listening Becomes | Photocopy Paper, Bags, Flax, Baskets & Participatory Practice
- amanda haran
- Jan 5
- 12 min read
Updated: Jan 6
This post reflects on how my practice as a Creative Listener to the Creative Agent project and as a contemporary community textile artist in Derbyshire has led me to think about carriers rather than heroes. I'm drawn to the idea that the stories most worth celebrating and sharing are not those of spectacle or dominance, but of the quiet, everyday labour of people who gather, hold, and sustain life without ceremony. This way of thinking follows directly from my earlier reflection on creative listening, and has been deepened through a return to the writing of Ursula K Le Guin, one of four philosophers whose ideas are increasingly shaping how I understand participation, care, and what it means to carry things forward as a Creative Agent or community participatory artist. Willats, the Christmas Reith Lectures of Rutger Bregman, and being reminded of the 'Man In The Arena' speech by Theodore Roosevelt have twinkled through my festive downtime.
This post moves from listening and remembering to absorbing, unpicking and responding.
Listening To What Is Left Behind In Community Practice When You're Not A 'Hero'
Over recent months, I’ve become increasingly aware that much of what matters in community practice has nowhere to go. The figure of the 'hero' is still too often rewarded: those who speak loudest, occupy the most space, or control the means of visibility. In contrast, the quieter work of people grafting at the coal face, holding communities together through listening and care, often goes unrecognised. I've found myself increasingly appalled by how easily heroism is confused with impact.
For me, richness sits quietly in fragments, in pauses, in residue, and in what is left behind once a project has formally ended. These are not failures or gaps, but forms of knowledge and action that resist easy capture.
As a community artist and through my work with Creative Agents, I've learned that value often emerges through small gestures, partial participation, informal exchanges, and moments of connection that are never fully documented. These actions shape how communities move and relate to one another, yet they are easily lost when the 'hero' and attention shift elsewhere. What rests in statistics and reports housed on shelves simply does not offer a holistic human view of what has occurred; indeed, the formal typed report that must have accompanied Willat's work, as he had applied for funding, was not visible in his cherished public archive.
Spending time with Stephen Willats' work in Nottingham made me acutely aware of how much collective effort and working-class knowledge disappear when it is not actively held or cared for beyond the moment of participation. In revisiting the Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs, the attempt to reconnect with original participants revealed how easily ordinary commitment evaporates when it is not carried forward in some tangible way.
What felt missing was not explanation or outcome, but a carrier, something capable of holding actions, relationships, learning, and effort so they can remain present within a community. I remember the commemorative silver trophy built during the second incarnation of the tennis project, ironically, from used cups, bowls and vessels.
From Carrier To Cup To Bag To Basket
Listening in a participatory way means paying attention not only to what is said, but to what remains unsaid or unnoticed, and recognising that these quieter elements still require care.
Gradually, the question of how to carry has begun to resolve itself into material form. Not immediately, and not conclusively, but through making and reflection. A carrier does not need to be heroic or monumental. It needs to be useful, durable, able to be passed from hand to hand, treasured, and to stimulate the retelling of that particular community story (not unlike the silver tennis presentation cup.)
I look at the plastic carrier bag holding the remnants of my Derbyshire Supergirl adventure as I write this, and then scan my desk strewn with flax paraphernalia. One of the most appropriate carriers I've found is the basket.
Photocopy Paper Basket Project, Residue & Carrying What Remains
The first Creative Listener response (not experimental) basket I intend to make does not begin with flax (though my 'flaxy' force is strong on this one!)
It begins with photocopy paper. It originates directly from Derbyshire Supergirl.
During the making of Derbyshire Supergirl, I accumulated a carrier bag full of offcuts, scraps, test prints, and discarded paper. I was beginning to make friends with my new printer; it's a relationship that is still fraught with mistrust. There were many incarnations of Derbyshire Supergirl that we produced together; some more positive than others. At the time, this scissor massacred material felt like waste as I tried to perfect the Willats Way: the inevitable byproduct of working something through to a resolution. I assumed it would be thrown away once the project had found its resting place.
Returning to it now, I see it differently. (I'm lucky that I'm not a clean freak and that my tardy attempts to maintain a spik-and-span shed studio space have been blighted.)
That paper carries traces of the work that are not visible elsewhere: moments of hesitation, changes of mind, fragments of thinking, and the physical effort of trying things out. It also carries theory. Embedded within those pages are diagrams, maps, Supergirl herself, language that engages directly with Stephen Willats' systems-based approach to listening and participation, and my thoughts on the Creative Agents project.
Rather than treating this material as something to archive or discard, I've become interested in what it might mean to carry it forward. Not by preserving it intact, but by allowing it to change form.
At this point, I think it's important to acknowledge my mixed feelings at the 'death' of Derbyshire Supergirl. She was created in the purest regard of Willats, with such hope, optimism and pride. I'm a bit sad that she didn't make the cut necessitated by listening to the community.
Anyhow, making a basket from this photocopy paper feels like an appropriate response and a Supergirl memorial. Where reports, diagrams, and written reflections attempt to explain or evidence what happened, a paper basket does something quieter. It gathers what remains. It holds what was noticed rather than what was concluded. It will still hold the facts, feelings and faces but in a new iteration.
From a Creative Listener position, this feels like a direct engagement with Willats' model, not by reproducing it, but by reworking its principles through different materials and contexts. Where earlier projects held active data, this basket holds residue. It acknowledges that some forms of knowledge are not meant to be flattened, resolved, or neatly summarised.
The paper basket is not a finished artwork or a symbolic gesture. It is a carrier for what would otherwise disappear.
Learning Basket Making Through Raffia Before Exhibition Or Invitation
Before attempting to make a basket from paper, I needed to understand the form itself without placing pressure on either the material or the outcome. This stage of the work was about learning with my hands, not about resolution.
I began by working with raffia, a dried grass I already had in my stock. Rather than moving straight into form, I first learned how to make raffia cordage. This felt like an essential starting point: understanding how the material behaves when twisted, how much tension it takes, and how it responds to repetition and rhythm (not unlike the start of an engagement with a community group.)
Once I could reliably make cord, I began working with a coiled basket form, building slowly and shaping it as I went. I paid particular attention to scale, weight, and how the object sat in the hand. The aim was not visual refinement, but to make something that felt good to hold: balanced, purposeful, and reassuring.
I used all of the raffia I had. The material itself defined the basket's size, and I didn't cut anything away. Bumps, wide sections, thinner stretches, and irregularities were all worked into the build rather than corrected or removed.
Everything felt precious and needed to be prized for whatever it brought to the whole.
Raffia is forgiving. It bends without breaking, allows for mistakes, and makes the underlying logic of a basket legible through touch. Using it first gave me space to understand structure, tension, and form without anxiety or waste.
I worked with what I already had to hand: an old needle, some thread collected from Arkwright's Mill in Derbyshire, and the large pair of scissors I had asked for my birthday, specifically for the Willats work (a significant purchase for me at the time.) Nothing new was bought for this stage. Nothing was optimised. The making relied on reuse, patience, portability, and familiarity rather than specialist tools or technical precision (indeed, I made in bed, on my knee, at the kitchen table; precision was definitely a secondary, or even tertiary, consideration.)
This phase was not about producing a finished object. It was about learning what could realistically be asked of others later on. If a basket could not be made slowly, with basic tools, minimal instruction, and room for uncertainty, then it was not a form I wanted to pass on, even as a response to the Creative Agents project or any other community adventure; no heroes needed here, just commitment, care and time.
I loved the rhythm of the making, the tiny, patient growth of the form, and how calm it made me feel. When the basket was finished, I wanted to hold it. I felt pride and satisfaction, not because it was perfect, but because it had been made with attention, generosity, and acceptance of what the material offered.
The baskets made at this stage are not prototypes to be refined. They are learning tools, marking the space between intention and invitation. This preparatory work matters to me as a community artist. It ensures that any future invitation is grounded in lived experience rather than assumptions, and that participation remains genuinely accessible, low-cost, and open-ended.
Listening Without Making | Reflection In Creative Practice
Over this period, there has been as much listening, researching, and thinking as there has been making. I haven't experienced these as separate activities. They have braided together, each informing the other.
Christmas became a pause in which ideas that had been circulating more quietly began to settle. I returned to writing and talks that have been shaping my thinking over time, and noticed how clearly they now spoke to one another. Ursula K Le Guin's understanding of carriers rather than heroes continued to anchor my thinking, offering permission to value the slow, the ordinary, and the cumulative. Stephen Willats' insistence on attention, feedback, and responsibility within social systems felt newly alive, particularly in relation to what remains after a project has ended.
Alongside this, I found myself stumbling across the Christmas Reith Lectures by Rutger Bregman, and my favourite and oft-quoted 'Man in the Arena' speech by Theodore Roosevelt. At first glance, these might seem at odds with one another, but together they offered something important. Bregman's emphasis on trust, cooperation, and collective responsibility counterbalanced Roosevelt's call to step forward, take risks, and accept the possibility of failure. Between them sat a shared belief in participation over spectatorship.
What connected all of these ideas was a growing acceptance that meaningful work is rarely neat or guaranteed. It requires courage, but not heroism (although Bregman did mention the hero, which I felt was at odds with my newfound Supergirl ideology.) Commitment, but not dominance. Attention, rather than control. Listening, rather than certainty. Small community groups rather than armies.
This period of reflection mattered. It reminded me that not making is sometimes part of making, and that slowing down can be an active choice rather than a hesitation. Before moving further into material responses, I needed to be clear about the values guiding the work, and the kind of invitation I might eventually extend to others.
I am reminded of my meeting with one of the Creative Agents, who was concerned about an imposed period of retrenchment and outwardly active inaction necessitated by the project not going the way she had envisaged; a rerouting was needed, but where? The only way to find the answer was to stop, gather information for reappraisal, add a dollop of research, and sprinkle with chat from others in the Creative Agents circle. Pausing is not failing. And, don't worry if others viewing from the outside might misunderstand this time.
My work has rested here: in thought, in reading, in listening, and in the quiet alignment of principles that will shape what comes next.
At this point, I felt the need to pause and visually hold the thinking. The diagram that follows is not a plan or a model, but a way of noticing relationships as they form. It allows multiple ideas, materials, and influences to sit alongside one another without hierarchy, resolution, or demand for outcome. Like the baskets that follow, it is a carrier rather than a conclusion.
Naming Fear, Risk & Failure
At this point, it feels important to name the uncertainty that sits alongside the intention, not just for me, but within the wider context of Creative Agents and the realities of participatory community practice.
I have never made a basket or cord from paper before. I don't yet know how it will behave when twisted, whether it will hold tension, or how it might respond to repetition and wear. I also know that I am not working with ideal materials. This basket will not be made from carefully selected or specially prepared paper, but from the hacked, cut, photocopied remnants already in my possession. These are the materials that remain, and they are the materials I have to work with.
This feels familiar.
Community projects are rarely carried out under ideal conditions. They are shaped by limited budgets, tight timeframes, uneven resources, and the need to adapt continually to what is available rather than what is imagined. Within Creative Agents, the work is openly done within these constraints, understanding that care, responsiveness, and trust often matter more than optimisation or polish.
I've written previously about creative listening as a practice that requires sitting with uncertainty, partial outcomes, and the discomfort of not knowing how things will resolve. In reflecting on Stephen Willats' Social Resource Project for Tennis Clubs, I was struck by how even historically significant participatory work did not meet all its intended aims, yet still held value in what it generated along the way.
In choosing to work with photocopy paper 'rubbish', limited tools, and no guaranteed outcome, I'm deliberately placing myself in conditions not unlike those experienced by the Creative Agents. This feels important. If I am seeing constraints, uncertainty, and risk in my creative listening, then I need to be willing to do the same in the response, whatever it might be.
Moving into paper as a material mirrors this way of working. The paper may tear. The cord may fail. The form may not hold as hoped. What I imagine may not be what emerges. Naming that risk matters, particularly in a context where participation is invited rather than directed. This is where the 'Man in the Arena' resurfaces for me, not as a call to individual heroism, but as permission to step forward without certainty. Within Creative Agents, this courage is collective. It is held across conversations, shared reflection, and learning together, rather than resting on any single person or outcome. I think this is a critical gift in the programme.
I am also guided here by the combined thinking of Ursula K Le Guin, Stephen Willats, and Rutger Bregman, each of whom, in different ways, places value on participation over performance, trust over control, and process over resolution. In this context, failure is not an endpoint. It is information. It feeds back into the work, shaping what happens next.
If the paper basket fails, that failure will still matter.
It will still be part of the listening. It will inform how invitations are framed, how materials are approached, and how care is taken in future stages of the work. This project does not depend on mastery or success, but on attentiveness, responsiveness, and the willingness to adapt.
So this is where the work currently sits: within real constraints, with uncertainty acknowledged, and with a commitment to proceed carefully. Not to prove something, but to continue listening through making, and to do the best I can with what is available. I must add that, as a currently rehabilitating perfectionist who is often referred to as the 'sensitive one' by my family, I don't like failure, or even the possibility of it. However, to be a true Creative Agent or community-centred participatory artist, this is the habitat that must be lived in and will be lived in during my making.
Continuing Through Pausing & Making | What Comes Next
For now, the work pauses here. Not because it is finished, but because it is being carefully held and assessed. As a Creative Listener working alongside the Creative Agents, this moment is about sitting with the same mix of feelings, thoughts, uncertainty, and partial activity that exists within a live community project, rather than stepping outside it to comment from a distance. The values have been tested, the conditions have been named honestly, and the limits have been Willats' acknowledged. The bowl and basket forms are not intended as outcomes or solutions, but as a performative response shaped by listening, constraint, and reflection, drawing on Stephen Willats' understanding of art as a social model where observation, feedback, and response are integral to the work. What comes next will not be rushed or resolved in advance. It will emerge through continued attention, care, and responsiveness, extending the practice of listening through making.
The outcome is considered likely to occur, but might not. Either termination represents success and should be recognised as such by all bodies (and me.)
