I’m Jen Cantwell, I’m on the Hi-Arts Making Progress programme, I’m a mid career maker with my practice Sporran Nation, I also work across mediums in a more experimental way and for the making progress programme I’m working with knit and sound technology, with a virtual element added in. Aided + abetted by my partner, […]

This month,  having recently been taken on board by Screen HI to make films about the artists showcased in the HI-Arts Making Progress mentoring scheme, I’ve been really keen to get stuck into the project and am very enthusiastic about learning all about the process involved (and, of course, meeting lots of new people along […]

I’ll let you into a small secret — the original inspiration for starting this series of blogs was the weekly e-bulletin issued by Senscot’s co-Founder Laurence Demarco, which contains a wealth of useful information and links, but is made unmissable by Laurence’s very personal musings on his own life and the world around him. Often […]

I really enjoyed reading nick’s report, thank you. I have been working away and have done nearly 40 ropes so far,I am planning to make 101 and to have one large display in the gallery. I have now also got a title for the exhibition – ‘ Tied to nature’  Rope, string and thread made from […]

Both by age and temperament—if not by celebrity–I’m an obvious candidate to join the ranks of TV’s ‘Grumpy Old Men’, and in that role I’d normally be the first to fulminate about ‘dumbing down’ as an inescapable fact of contemporary life.  So, for example, I was spitting expletives over the BBC Trust’s recent recommendation that […]

As you walk into the main hall at the Stockholm furniture fair you are instantly overwhelmed by the scale of the furniture manufacturing industry in Scandinavia. This is not because of the size of the hall or the number of products on show but the fact that most of the companies and the designers there […]

On Wednesday I spent the day in Edinburgh with a group of colleagues discussing, amongst other issues, curating craft exhibitions. Amongst all the doom and gloom of funding cuts and the difficulties of making exhibition happen in the current climate it is easy to lose sight of how important the curation of high quality craft […]

It looks like BBC 4 has uncovered another cult hit. ‘The Killing’ follows the police investigation of a murder over twenty days, one day per episode. It has a strong, believable, feisty heroine, a satisfying, complex plot, and excellent filming. We‘re going to have to work hard to keep up as BBC4 are cruelly showing […]

In this post I will relate about my recent trip down to the Scottish Central Belt – and some progress in the “karbunkel” department (please note the “k”s – this is on purpose: such my “boils” reference the Germanic and the Medieval). This one might take you a little longer to read …

hi all good to have meeting on monday enclose picture of my studio wall with combinations of plants, peat and experimental structures – creating forms which engage with the plants… I am interested in the balance and contrast between: – the natural order of the plants and the manmade order we create