Telling Your Story - Showing and Sharing Your Work

Editor's Notes

• #2 Thank introducer and opportunity to speak at Craft Victoria on a topic I’m most passionate about and for an organisation that supports fellow crafters!
• #3 Who here was inspired by someone to get into their craft? Who is also on social media sharing their story?
• #4 Introduce myself. I call myself a social learning consultant – helping organisations to look at how to build collaborative learning opportunities into the work itself through the use of different social tools and platforms with the aim of getting people to talk to each other, be inspired with ideas from each other so they could be applied to work. I’m also a knitter – been knitting over 35 years and have a community of fellow knitters in groups and online communities and networks that I learn from.
• #5 In my work, which involves pretty much knowledge work – lots of my ideas are in my head.
• #6 However we now are in an extraordinary time where we can share our stories and our work through social media as well as create online communities of people who are the same or even different from us who love our work, are inspired by it – or even share their ideas.
• #7 I call it that we can now work out loud. Making the process of your craft (your thinking around it) visible that it helps and inspires others.
• #8 It took me my passionate and love for knitting to have the penny dropped as to how it could work for my own work – and it applies to pretty much any job, any field, craft or business.
• #9 Many years ago I was invited to a knit camp in Daylesford to spend a weekend knitting with strangers.
• #10 As I waited in the car, I figured, should I go in, who are these people? How can they help me?
• #11 When I entered the house, I saw this….
• #12 People sitting around talking about their work, their yarn, their patterns, their needles, their stories – collaborative and social learning at its best for the improvement of the craft and the community,
• #13 Knitters had social tools such as their ipads and also Instagrammers, Bloggers, Vloggers, YouTube channels and were using these tools for the purposes of teaching others.
• #14 They also have online communities such as Ravelry,
• #15 Knitters proud to show their work – imagine these beautiful pieces from the Bendigo Wool Show – if people explained what went into them,
• #16 Knitters follow patterns but the beauty of patterns is that this is a guide. You may look at a pattern and follow it to a tee – however, what happens is that you customise it to create your own creation. This knowledge as it is written by the person is set but we don’t know the background and the inspiration. Why did they choose that type of yarn? Examples of such knitting patterns shows us that we will all put our own spin on things and create things for ourselves.