The RSN Certificate & Diploma in Technical Hand Embroidery course gives the unique opportunity to learn a craft from several different locations, both Online and Onsite, in Bristol, Rugby, Durham, Glasgow as well as at our base at Hampton Court Palace, South West London.

Meet Certificate Student, Jessa Fairbrother, who shares her experience of the Certificate & Diploma (C&D) course, at the RSN Bristol satellite location, alongside being a full-time artist.

“I started embroidery when I was a child. I was taught ‘Handwork’ at a Steiner school. It was mostly knitting but we did an embroidery of the ‘seasons’ when we were about ten years old, which I still have.

I began to use embroidery as a skill in my work around 2014. I had always used sewing to make my own clothes as a teenager, but the act of stitching into my photographs became an essential part of trying to explore themes of attachment in relation to maternal loss. This became a major subject in my work.

As it became increasingly important as part of my artistic vocabulary, I found out about the Royal School of Needlework through researching online: – I wanted to find something giving me a specific training in a historical perspective. I was investigating a lot around the 18th century for a large-scale project and realised the C&D course would enable me to get a very particular set of skills that would give me a new language for my work.

I was fortunate to receive a QEST scholarship. This funded me to embark on the C&D programme at the RSN – I was absolutely delighted to get this award as it made the training possible. What is even more brilliant is that I was able to do it in Bristol, which is where I live, and get the same teaching as I would if I was going to Hampton Court Palace.

I’ve absolutely loved working with my Tutor, Deborah Wilding, and getting to know the students bit by bit. I find the way the course is structured really useful for me because I am a full-time artist, and my schedule isn’t that regular: to be able to fit it in around that is brilliant. I also appreciate very much how the process of adult learning is managed. Everyone can go at their own pace in the classroom, it’s completely individualised, so there are multiple projects going on at any one time, but everyone is learning the stitches in the same order!

Using the skills is now integral to my practice as an artist, because it formalised what I was doing by instinct. Things take me less time because I have got much more of an idea how to plan work, and things like setting up and how to do the design in a certain order is really helpful.

The purpose of doing this was very much about connecting to a lineage – as an artist I belong to a tradition of feminist practice and to be able to sew certain things connects me to a history of women making work. That is very important to me, as it’s how we secure ourselves as artists in the canon, and in the landscape.

A really good example of this is the show I am in at the moment: – Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood. I have a piece included in it called ‘Role Play (Woman with Cushion)’ which is a series of perforated photographs, stitched together to form a ‘quilt’ with a gold embroidered edge. The work is about maternal loss and yearning.

Installation view of Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood at Arnolfini, Bristol. Photo: Lisa Whiting. Courtesy Arnolfini and Hayward Gallery Touring.

When you see the whole exhibition, you can see it spans many decades. There is a nuance and complexity of the subject from so many points of view – together it brings the dialogue into the now. We need history to make sense of these conversations that go forward into the future.

The show is on tour, so there is time to see it in Bristol – it’s at the Arnolfini until the 26 May – before it travels to Birmingham MAC, Sheffield Millennium Galleries, and Dundee Contemporary Arts during this year and the first part of 2025.”

Purchase tickets to see Jessa’s work in the ‘Acts of Creation: On Art and Motherhood’ exhibition here

If you are interested in joining our Certificate & Diploma Online Course, join our next Online Information Session and learn more about what the course has to offer.

Read more about the Certificate & Diploma Course here