Clare Daněk

My research explores experiences of developing craft skills, creative identity, and analogue making spaces. I am particularly interested in ideas about play, permission and becoming in these contexts, and in the use of creative methods at different stages of the research process. 

My PhD thesis ‘Working alone, working together: exploring craft learning in open access community making spaces’ involved autoethnographic research in two shared craft spaces. Through learning basic ceramics and printmaking skills alongside others, I presented the use of play as a lens through which to examine amateur craft learning; strategic learning as a key model for knowledge transmission within spaces of informal creative activity; ‘alongside’ as a theoretical position; and the notion of informal craft spaces as ‘permission spaces’, reflective of the tension between opportunities and constraints in such spaces. I also developed a ‘stitch journal’, a daily embroidered and appliqued document running over 735 days, as a reflective and reflexive device; this has since featured in various creative research methods publications and teaching. 

My current research builds on my PhD work to further explore how the maker develops their creative identity as they move away from tuition and into their own practice. I am particularly interested in how playful, improvisatory and narrative textile-based methods (specifically embroidery, applique, and patchworking) can be used as reflective and reflexive tools in exploring and expressing this experience. 

Publications

Book chapter

Stitching as Reflection and Resistance: the use of a stitch journal during doctoral study. In: J. Goode, K. Lumsden & J. Bradford, eds. Crafting Autoethnography: Processes and Practices of Making Self and Culture. 2023. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 121-131. 

Journal article

Revealing All: from novice to amateur in the community printmaking workshop. 2020. Performance Research, 25(1), pp. 48-51. 

Conferences and presentations

2024  

AHRC Everyday Creativity research network conference, London: ‘Proximity, permission and play in the shared making space’ 

Art of Fiction project ‘Patchwork and Creativity’ workshop, University of Cambridge: ‘Process and document: a ‘stitch journal’ as a creative tool during doctoral study’ 

2020  

University of Salford Performance Research Group Seminar Series: ‘Act-reflect-stitch: a stitch journal as a reflective tool during PhD’ 

Tactics & Praxis seminar group, Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge: ‘Act-reflect-stitch: a stitch journal as a reflective tool during PhD’ 

2019   

Making Futures 2019, Arts University Plymouth: ‘Making Visible: Learning together in community making spaces’ 

2018   

WRoCAH (White Rose College of the Arts & Humanities) conference: ‘Stitching the days: a stitch journal as a reflective tool’ 

‘Documenting Creative Practice Research’ event, University of Leeds 

Creative Research Methods 2018, University of Derby: ‘Stitching the days: a stitch journal as a reflective tool’ 

Qualifications

PhD Craft / Creativity – University of Leeds  

MA Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship – University of Leeds 

BA Hons Fine Art (Painting) - Norwich University of the Arts