Crafting Quality of Life: Creativity and Well-Being

The “Everyday Creativity of Women Craftmakers” is a narrative research project exploring the ways that contemporary women narrate the meanings of home craft-making in their lives. Craft-making enjoys continuing popularity among contemporary women including young women, and women from different cultures and socio-economic groups. Many of these women have busy lives; they are juggling domestic responsibilities, motherhood and paid work and yet they make time and space for their craft-making. In this article, we focus on three of our participants who are mothers with children still living at home, the meanings craft-making has for them, and how craft-making is linked with their well-being and quality of life. We discuss the ways these three women use craft as both an expression of themselves as mothers, and as escape or relief from the demands of mothering. We explore a number of key themes emerging from the research: craft-making as a challenge and a creative outlet; craft-making and gift giving; intergenerational connections; and the strong belief on the part of these women that craft-making is important and in some instances vital for their well-being, and contributes substantially to the quality of their lives

Women doing it forever: the everyday creativity of women craftmakers

In this article we discuss our narrative research project, The everyday creativity of women craftmakers. The research explores what craftmaking means to contemporary Australian women, including perceived links with their well-being.We filmed narrative interviews with 15 amateur women craftmakers. Each interview began with a guided tour of the woman's craftwork. The interviews explored in detail the complex and varied roles and meanings that craft has in these women's lives. We identified six key themes in the interviews: craft as a form of personal creative expression, craft making and well-being, intergenerational and familial connections through craft, the significance of making objects to give as gifts, social and community connections, the incorporation of craft skills into a sense of self and identity, and the pleasure,joy and love of making as an intrinsic aspect of craftmakin

Experiments to develop High Q and tunable superconducting coplanar resonators applicable for quantum bit technology

Measurements are made on superconducting Niobium on Sapphire and oxidized Silicon microwave coplanar resonators for quantum bit experiments. Device geometry and materials are investigated and quality factors in excess of a million have been observed. The resonant frequency as a function of temperature of a coplanar resonator is characterised in terms of the change in the number density of superconducting electrons. At lower temperatures, the resonant frequency no longer follows this function, and evidence is shown that this is associated with the resonant coupling of the resonant frequency with two level systems in the substrate. At T<2.2 K the resonant frequency scales logarithmically with the temperature, indicating that two level systems distributed in the volume of the Silicon Dioxide affect the electric permittivity. Applying higher input microwave power levels is shown to saturate these two level systems, essentially decoupling them from the CPR resonance. This is observed as an increase in resonant frequency and Q factor. The resonant frequency is also shown to have a high sensitivity to a magnetic field applied perpendicular to the plane of the coplanar resonator, with a quadratic dependence for the fundamental, second and third harmonics. Frequency shift of hundreds of linewidths are obtained. Coplanar resonator are fabricated and measured with current control lines built on chip, and these have shown to produce frequency shifts of tens of Kilohertz

Feminist Fictionmaking

This paper is an exploration of the process of feminist fiction writing; what I have termed fictionmaking, to deliberately situate fiction writing as a form of cultural production and social construction that can and should be interrogate. This approach by necessity challenges some of the myths about the creative process including romantic notions that posit creativity as individual, give rise to the sacredness of the text and situate the writer as either conduit or genius. This interrogation is important to me as a feminist committed to being politically accountable and as a novelist writing to challenge our perceptions and create a deeper understanding of ourselves and each other. It is my contention that all feminist fiction writers have a political ‘intention’ and though the intention of the writer cannot be said to construct the meaning of the work, it is a crucial aspect of the fabric that forms the work. In this paper, I use my own experience of writing, Swimming, a feminist novel (currently unpublished) as a basis for a self-reflective, critical approach aimed at illuminating the feminist fictionmaking process

Women Walking: Fragments

Special Issue: Creative Writing as Research I