Role
Dr Sally Cooke is a Research Fellow in Nottingham School of Art & Design. She works primarily on the Fashion Fictions project, created and led by Dr Amy Twigger Holroyd. This design-led participatory research explores plural possibilities for post-growth fashion systems. By bringing people together to imagine, explore and enact alternative fashion worlds, Fashion Fictions offers an unconventional route to real-world change. Sally’s recent work on this project has resulted in a jointly authored resource pack for teachers and facilitators working with children.
Sally is a member of the Sustainable Transitions group in the Fashion & Textile Research Centre.
Career overview
Sally is a researcher, maker and designer, with research interests in fashion, sustainability, textile craft skills, sustainable clothing practices and participatory research methods. Prior to studying full-time for a PhD, Sally taught at Leeds Arts University between 2016 and 2019, initially on Level 4 Textile Design and latterly on the MA Creative Practice programme, where she achieved HEA Fellowship. Alongside her teaching roles Sally established a micro-business designing and producing a range of flatpack cut-and-sew kits for sewing beginners, which launched at the Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair in 2018. Sally was a founder member of the co-operative behind the establishment of Leeds Print Workshop – an open-access print facility in Leeds city centre – in 2016. Sally’s enduring interest in community activism, community arts facilities and alternative business models links her more recent work with previous careers in charity shop/volunteer management and third sector social policy.
Research areas
Sally’s PhD, funded by the UK Art & Humanities Research Council and completed in 2024, explored experiences of beginners learning to sew clothes for themselves at home, considered in the context of fashion and sustainability. The study used a combination of qualitative participatory methods, including an adapted form of video elicitation interviews with research participant. Based on thematic analysis of those interviews, the resulting thesis explores themes of craft learning and emotion, clothing wearability, materiality and material awareness. Sally received a doctoral study initiative award for a methodological paper presented at the 2022 IFFTI conference. Further writing based on her PhD study includes a peer reviewed article published in the Form Akademisk journal and a book chapter for a forthcoming handbook of online research ethics (Bloomsbury).
Prior to her PhD, Sally gained an MA in creative practice from Leeds Arts University, for practice-informed research focusing on hand and digital processes in design for printed textiles. This work received a bursary from the UK Textile Society and resulted in a paper presented at Making Futures 2017.
Sally is currently developing ideas for a participatory action research project under the working title of ‘Wearable Wardrobes’. The project builds on her PhD findings to inform and trial a series of workshops designed to alter clothing relationships and consumption behaviours through enhance material awareness.
Press expertise
Issues of fashion and sustainability and the role of sewing and textile craft skills in relation to these topics.