MA Craft & Material Practices

Suzanna James is an award-winning textile artist, writer and educator whose practice asks how cloth can hold memory, make absence visible and become a way of thinking about care and repair. She works principally through hand embroidery, drawing threads from woven cloth and stitching into the spaces left behind. This slow alteration of the fabric produces delicate, lace-like structures, sometimes with words sitting almost out of sight in the surface. For Suzanna, cloth is not only a material but a language: it can speak about labour, knowledge, relationships and what has been lost. Her practice also moves through writing, photography, drawing, film and collaborative work. A project supported by Wales Arts International took her to Peru, where she worked with Awamaki and women-led textile cooperatives concerned with preserving knowledge of drop-spindle spinning. That experience fed into Caring Cloth, the research she developed during her MA in Textiles at the Royal College of Art. Her dissertation was awarded a distinction and selected to represent Textiles at the RCA’s Critical and Historical Studies Symposium. Suzanna completed the MA in 2022 with support from scholarships from QEST and the Coats Foundation Bursary Trust, together with an MA award from the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters. She is undertaking doctoral study at the Royal College of Art, where her research is based within the Health and Care Research Cluster in the School of Arts & Humanities. Her work was shown at Collect 2025 at Somerset House and she is a studio holder at Cockpit Bloomsbury in London. In 2024, Suzanna undertook an Artistic Research Fellowship at the Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, University of Bergen, where she exhibited at and co-curated KMD: Textiles, at Tekstilindustrimuseet in Salhus. A Textile Society of America Student and New Professional Scholarship supported her presentation at the Society’s 2024 symposium. Her presentation, Caring Cloth Praxis: Ethics of Loss, Practices of Remembering, was published in the symposium proceedings, and her essay Tender as Needlework: Remembering Through Cloth and Care followed in 2025. She was a winner of a Wynn Newhouse Award in 2025. Suzanna began her teaching career at Carmarthen School of Art, returning after her degree to the local art school in her home county of Carmarthenshire, where she had completed her Foundation Diploma in Art and Design. She credits the staff team there with supporting her as she took her first steps into teaching. She went on to teach MA Sustainable Textiles at Falmouth University, and across textiles and fine art programmes at Cardiff Metropolitan University and Winchester School of Art. She also mentors young people through Arts Emergency. At Arts University Plymouth, she teaches on MA Craft & Material Practices, bringing her experience of material enquiry, writing and socially engaged practice to a course that encourages makers to work across materials and disciplines.

William is an artist whose practice explores drawing in an expanded sense through works on paper, print, ceramics and video. William studied a Masters in Drawing at Arts University Plymouth and graduated in 2022 with a Distinction, where his research interests were focused on drawing, performativity and the point where art meets life and what this means for his work. He is one third of art collective Nous Vous and has exhibited in solo and group shows across the UK and internationally. Studio Luz, William’s commercial and commission based studio has produced murals, installations, prints and images for clients including The Barbican, Aesop, The Hepworth Museum, Ace & Tate, Nike and Facebook.

Gayle is a practising artist, educator and researcher. Having exhibited nationally and internationally, Gayle has work in the permanent collections of the V&A, Musee de Vianne, Glazenhuis and Ebeltoft Museum of Glass amongst others. Previously, Gayle has worked in the Gallery Education Department at the Crafts Council; she has also been an artist in residence at Bullseye Glass in the USA. Examples of her work can be found in many glass publications. Previously, Gayle was a Senior Lecturer on the BA Hons Contemporary Craft course at Falmouth University and formerly an External Examiner at De Montfort University. She has a BA in 3D Design: Glass and an MA in Creative Practice: Fine Art. Gayle has worked in a wide variety of kiln-formed glass techniques for over twenty years. She recently presented a paper at the Ireland Glass Biennale 2020 and ‘S-O-T Body Repairs: Narrative Pursuits’ was published in Arts Journal in 2019. Previously, Gayle was engaged in collaborative research with Tavs Jorgensen, investigating Rapid Tooling for glass casting moulds combined with digital technologies. She is the co-author of papers presented at the GAS conference in Chicago 2014, ‘Making Futures’ conference in Plymouth, UK (2013), and ‘Towards a New Ceramic Future’, research presentation at V&A, UK (2012). She is a member of the international Glass Virus think tank. Gayle is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Jason is a designer exploring the links between the crafted object and the possibilities afforded by 3D printing and other technologies. He has a degree in 3D Design, specialising in ceramics and an MA in Design from Central St Martins. He is currently undertaking a PhD in Ceramics Manufacture. His work has been widely exhibited and is held in public and private collections internationally. He also undertakes architectural ceramic commissions. He is passionate about ceramic materials and strives, through the use of technology, to produce new forms and appropriate motifs for the 21st century. Jason has taught at a range of levels. He teaches across the Craft & Material Practices programme and delivers specialist teaching in computer-aided design. He also works in our Fab Lab.