Women Who Make, Flax, Courage & Finding Hands To Hold

Yesterday I took part in the Women Who Make online panel discussion as part of Derbyshire Makes, speaking as a contemporary community textile artist working with flax, participation and shared making in Derbyshire. The conversation explored where women make, how creativity develops and the people who help us step into cultural spaces. The panel was held online for an international audience, and, to be honest, I felt frightened before it began.

Even now, after it has finished, I can still feel the emotional exhaustion sitting underneath it, as though part of me is still sitting in that Zoom room trying to work out whether I belonged there at all. Leaving the panel, I felt unsure how I had landed, replaying moments in my head and hearing my inner critic much louder than the actual audience. Yet afterwards, people told me I had spoken well and that they felt proud of me. I am slowly learning that these two realities can coexist. Visibility can feel exposing even when a connection has genuinely happened.

One of the things I mentioned during the panel was that I am trying to become more courageous and say yes to opportunities before I feel fully ready for them. I spoke about how women are often stronger together when we share, encourage, and support one another, and I found myself saying, almost without thinking, that perhaps we need to find some hands to hold. The sentence stayed with me long after the panel ended and has continued unfolding in my mind ever since.

Part Of The Women Who Make Webinar Series For Derbyshire Makes, Exploring Creativity, Participation, Courage & Where Women Create

As the discussion unfolded, every woman on the panel spoke about the importance of other women in their creative lives. Teachers, friends, peers, mentors, family members and creative communities had all played a part in helping them continue. I realised how deeply this connected to my own experience.

Coming from a back street Northern family, arts and culture, at least in the formal sense, were not part of everyday conversation. Creativity existed, but not in a way that naturally led towards galleries, artist talks, exhibitions, or cultural institutions. Those worlds felt distant and unfamiliar to me when I was younger, and even now, I still carry traces of that uncertainty into the spaces I enter.

During the panel, I realised that some of the first people to hold my hand into those spaces were my textile and art teachers, Mrs Fisher and Mrs Tankard, women who quietly widened the edges of what I believed might be possible for me. They encouraged me to believe that I deserved to be there. They treated creativity as something valuable and possible. Looking back now, I can see they were not simply teaching technique. They were offering permission. It matters deeply to me because I think much of my practice now comes from wanting to extend that same hand to others. Perhaps part of my role now is becoming one of the women willing to hold that space open for someone else.

When I worked on the Turner Prize project at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, I was frightened then, too. I often felt unsure of myself, uncertain whether I belonged in those spaces or had the right language, confidence, or authority. Yet at the same time, I found myself instinctively trying to encourage others, helping them feel comfortable, welcome, and able to participate. Looking back now, this feels like one of the strongest threads running through my practice. Whether I am sharing flax seeds with neighbours, showing communities how to crack flax stems to reveal fibre, encouraging people to try Open Spaces before they feel ready, or speaking publicly about contemporary community textile practice and participation, I am often trying to reduce the fear people feel around arts and culture.

I think many people stand at the edge of cultural spaces, believing they do not belong there, watching from the outside and waiting for permission that may never formally arrive. Not because they lack creativity or intelligence, but because they have never been given permission, encouragement or confidence. Sometimes all it takes is one person willing to hold the door open, walk alongside them or reassure them that they are allowed to take up space.

As I listened to the panel yesterday, I also found myself thinking again about Ursula K. Le Guin's Carrier Bag Theory. Her writing challenged the idea that human stories must always centre around heroes, conquest and dominance. Instead, she proposed the carrier bag as another kind of story structure: something that gathers, holds, carries and shares.

The more I reflected on it, the more it seemed to connect to both my practice and my understanding of women's creativity.

Creativity does not always emerge through confidence, certainty or heroic individualism. Often, it grows through quieter forms of support. Shared conversations. Encouragement. Community halls. Front gardens. Kitchen tables. Group chats. Someone saying yes to us before we can fully say yes to ourselves.

Another moment from the panel that stayed with me came when fellow panellist Sasha Archer shared a photograph of herself painting pottery on her front step during the discussion. Something about that image resonated with me immediately.

Front step recognition.

The recognition that creative life is often stitched into the edges of ordinary living rather than separated from it. The spaces where women make are not neutral. Front steps, kitchen tables, gardens and community halls all shape the rhythm, accessibility and visibility of creative life itself.

The understanding that creativity does not always happen inside perfect studios or carefully constructed cultural settings. Some of us carry creativity in every sinew of ourselves and create whenever and wherever we can because making is not something we switch on and off. It sits in the body and asks to be expressed.

What might happen if creativity returned more fully to the places where we already are? On front steps. At kitchen tables. In gardens. Between responsibilities. In moments grabbed from ordinary life. Perhaps that is partly why I work the way I do with flax in my front garden and local community. The front garden sits between public and private space, visible from the street and rooted within everyday life. I am interested in creativity that remains connected to neighbours, conversations, weather, washing lines, uncertainty and shared experience rather than separated away inside exclusive cultural spaces.

Making, for me, has increasingly become relational rather than isolated, and flax itself seems to support this gently. It grows openly rather than defensively. People stop to ask questions. Seeds are passed from hand to hand. Conversations begin. Knowledge spreads slowly through communities, neighbour to neighbour, person to person. Perhaps women's creativity is often carried collectively, passed carefully between us through encouragement, reassurance, conversation and example.

The image that stayed with me afterwards was not of a strong heroic container, but of a paper carrier bag softened by rain. A bag carrying seeds, stories, uncertainty, encouragement and fragile things gathered along the way. Sometimes I feel as though my own carrier bag gets wet and I worry the bottom might give way.

Yet somehow it continues carrying. Perhaps that is what many women do.

Perhaps many of us are moving through creative life like this, carrying what we can, trying to support each other while also holding our own fears and uncertainties together.

This also closely connects to my Arts Council England supported flax project. While the project includes material research into flax growing, spinning and weaving, it is also becoming increasingly clear to me that the work is about sharing knowledge publicly, creating spaces for participation and helping people feel able to enter creative conversations.

Flax itself seems to encourage this kind of exchange and shared learning.

Seeds are passed from hand to hand. Skills are demonstrated slowly and collectively. Knowledge travels through conversation, gatherings and shared activity. The process encourages people to stand close together, observe carefully, exchange stories and help each other learn. In many ways, flax has become both material and metaphor within my practice.

After the panel ended yesterday, I still felt uncertain. I still felt tired. I still questioned myself. But perhaps courage is not the absence of fear.

Perhaps courage is continuing anyway.

And perhaps part of women's creativity has always depended on finding some hands to hold while we learn to step forward.