about me
I'm Daryl Hooper (she/her) and I'm a textile artist, community artist facilitator, visible mender, teacher, natural dyer, gardener, budding herbalist and I thrive on creative community connection. I save seeds, sew my dreams, I'm enamoured with myths & stories and have a deep and fiery passion for colour. I have been making since I was a small bairn.
For me - slowing down is the most important thing we can do.
Pushing, tension and forcing creates blockages and lack of flow. I hit these walls often in my creative practice and life. Pushing for what I ‘think’ I need to do or ‘think’ I need to offer - when actually all I really need to do is ‘slow the folk down’ and just feel, play, make, create, reach out, talk to others, share whats going on, because most of the time people resonate with that and have similar goings on.
I feel very privileged to just be able to make and have a permanent roof over my head. I want to share skills with people to support them to feel like they can do something or share something from the heart or in a time of need. Because that’s what we need, we need community, we need to remember to reach out for help. We’re all human and all need love and connection to others and ourselves.
I'm from County Durham and I live and work in Bristol, UK.
biography
Daryl Hooper is a textile artist, teacher, photographer, visible mender, and community arts facilitator living and working in Bristol, UK.
She grew up in County Durham in a working-class family with a long line of knitters, sewers, darners, miners, submariners, shipbuilders and bricklayers. From a young age, Daryl was taught to care for her clothes — mending was just what you did. Her Gran’s voice still echoes in her work today, especially her favourite saying: “Shy bairns get nowt” (if you don’t ask, you don’t get). It’s taken Daryl most of her life to fully understand that lesson — and now she works to empower others not only with practical skills, but with confidence, voice, and creative power.
She believes we all have stories to tell, and that making together is a beautiful way to share them.
Education & Early Work
Daryl studied photography at Manchester Metropolitan University, where her work centred around documenting working-class towns, the decline of working men’s clubs, and shifting cultural landscapes. Her final-year project explored the idea of home — what it means, and what we surround ourselves with. She created an immersive installation using real living rooms and portraits of the people she met, placing working-class lives at the heart of her art.
That fire in her belly — to make art and craft accessible, representative, and inclusive — has been burning ever since.
Residency & Community Work
In 2018, Daryl was an artist-in-residence at Prenzlauer Kunst Kollektiv in Berlin, where she developed The Living Room project — a large installation combining her photography and textile work. Alongside the exhibition, she ran daily craft workshops for the local community, using art as a tool to connect people, share stories, and build confidence.
Back in the UK, Daryl has continued to focus on community-driven creative work, especially in sewing, quilting, and visible mending. She brings warmth, playfulness, and deep care into every session — creating welcoming spaces where people can come together, learn from each other, and express themselves through their hands.
She also led The Community Quilt Project at St Anne’s House (2025), a collaborative making experience that brings people together to co-create something meaningful and lasting.
Current Practice
Today, Daryl is focusing on her own creative practice and teaching workshops — particularly quilt-making and mending — and finding joy in the slow, grounding rhythm of using threads and cloth. Her current work explores storytelling, legacy, and the idea of crafting future personal artefacts. She draws inspiration from Celtic myths and archetypes of the wild woman, the queen, the maiden, the huntress, the lover, the sage, and the mystic — reconnecting with herself and her ancestry with every stitch.
The time is now.
Daryl believes everyone deserves to be heard and seen — and that making, together, is one of the most powerful ways we can do just that.
Contact me
If you want to collaborate, connect, enquire about a mending commission or get some 1:1 support with your quilt? Then reach out! I would love to hear from you. Fill in this form and I will get back to you as soon as I can!