A guide to harnessing the world of nature to create sustainable textile art. Textile artist Alice Fox shows how to work with found, foraged, gathered and grown materials to create fabulous textile pieces that are inspired by, and made from, nature. She encourages crafters to be open minded and experimental, using local (and sometimes) unconventional materials, working with the seasons and learning what materials are available at different times of year to ground artists in natural cycles and integrate creative activity with a strong sense of place and character. Alongside advice on growing your own plants (such as flax or nettles) for creative work, the book is packed with practical ideas for foraging - from weeds, dandelions and other plants useful for making cordage, or leaves that can be stitched, quilted and shaped into vessels, to grass, wool, plastics and mud that can be gathered and delightfully repurposed by the textile artist. Other ideas for found materials include stones, shells and wood that can be wrapped or woven into, as well as a multitude of urban treasures that find a new life in creative hands. Alongside advice on growing your own plants (such as flax or nettles) for creative work, the book is packed with practical ideas for foraging - from weeds, dandelions and other plants useful for making cordage, or leaves that can be stitched, quilted and shaped into vessels, to grass, wool, plastics and mud that can be gathered and delightfully repurposed by the textile artist. Other ideas for found materials include stones, shells and wood that can be wrapped or woven into, as well as a multitude of urban treasures that find a new life in creative hands.

This book examines the profound effect, on a major critic and novelist of the twentieth century, of the period of English literature's greatest glory, the Renaissance. Beginning in the sixteenth century with the poems and plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and with prose writings such as Hakluyt's Voyages, and continuing through the great lyric poets of the seventeenth century, the Renaissance influenced every aspect of Virginia Woolf's work. All her available writing - letters, diaries, reading-notes, drafts of essays, and novels, and feminist polemic - are explored in this illuminating study of Virginia Woolf's varied reactions to the period and its impact on her fiction and criticism. Each of the novels, in particular, is shown to integrate some element of Renaissance literature in its language, characterization, and often structure, enriching the fiction; thus this study deepens our understanding of Woolf's creative process, and our enjoyment of the works.

Inclusive Arts Practice and Research interrogates an exciting and newly emergent field: the creative collaborations between learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled artists which are increasingly taking place in performance and the visual arts. In Inclusive Arts Practice Alice Fox and Hannah Macpherson interview artists, curators and key practitioners in the UK and US. The authors introduce and articulate this new practice, and situate it in relation to associated approaches. Fox and Macpherson candidly describe the tensions and difficulties involved too, and explore how the work sits within contemporary art and critical theory. The book inhabits the philosophy of Inclusive Arts practice: with Jo Offer, Alice Fox and Kelvin Burke making up the design team behind the striking look of the book. The book also includes essays and illustrated statements, and has over 100 full-colour images. Inclusive Arts Practice represents a landmark publication in an emerging field of creative practice across all the arts. It presents a radical call for collaboration on equal terms and will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying, researching or already working within this dynamic new territory.

Inclusive Arts Practice and Research interrogates an exciting and newly emergent field: the creative collaborations between learning-disabled and non-learning-disabled artists which are increasingly taking place in performance and the visual arts. In Inclusive Arts Practice Alice Fox and Hannah Macpherson interview artists, curators and key practitioners in the UK and US. The authors introduce and articulate this new practice, and situate it in relation to associated approaches. Fox and Macpherson candidly describe the tensions and difficulties involved too, and explore how the work sits within contemporary art and critical theory. The book inhabits the philosophy of Inclusive Arts practice: with Jo Offer, Alice Fox and Kelvin Burke making up the design team behind the striking look of the book. The book also includes essays and illustrated statements, and has over 100 full-colour images. Inclusive Arts Practice represents a landmark publication in an emerging field of creative practice across all the arts. It presents a radical call for collaboration on equal terms and will be an invaluable resource for anyone studying, researching or already working within this dynamic new territory.