Online classes - how it all started

I've always been goal orientated. So in January 2018 I rather ambitiously added -

"Teach Online" to my goals list for the first time with absolutely no idea of how I would make it happen, mainly due to the lack of skills required! 

I wrote the same goal out again in January 2019.

And once again in January 2020 with the words, "This year will be different"

Then midway through 2020 - armed with only a Macbook Air - a tiny laptop - I took the first tentative steps to teaching online through zoom which I barely knew how to navigate. 

It was someone's job to say, "down a bit, up a bit" as I lowered my laptop lid to demonstrate how to make or bind a book or in this case, dye paper!

The beginning of a class always sounded like a seance as we all navigated zoom with phrases such as:

"Is there anybody there?"

"Can anyone hear me?"

"We can't see you!"

And always, just always, someone's husband wandered in while his wife was on one of my zooms and asked where his sock was. 

I fumbled my way through 2020 into 2021 having been thrown in at the deep end - learning to my horror that in-person hours definitely did NOT equal online hours! I had to adapt and adjust and I did that with a lot of you who read my newsletter. 

I'll always be grateful to you for coming along on the journey as I became more confident and my audience grew, thanks to people generously sharing me with their online contacts. 

By the time Dyed & Gone to Heaven became a regular online class I was finding my feet a little more and becoming far more comfortable with larger audiences. 

I have to say, the storage of the videos and for how long they'd be available was never something I really gave a lot of thought to (simply because I had enough on my plate at the time). I just put them on Vimeo (after a not great experience on Youtube) and got on with it. 

When people started asking if they had 'lifetime access' I said yes in the very early days, However, lifetime access never really felt clear to me - lifetime of the class? Me? The student? Book Art Studios?? WAYYYY to vague.

So I changed it to: "Access was granted as long as I had a Vimeo account."

Things have ticked along for years until recently (September 2026) when Vimeo stated their prices were going up and the bandwidth going down, bringing to my attention this needed to be dealt with. 

I put a post on my Instagram page which you can read here as I wanted to get the opinion of the art community both teachers and students. It generated a great and helpful discussion.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to address this and set clear intentions going forward. Then students can make their own clear choices about whether they feel my online classes are worth the investment based on those intentions.

I have a huge amount of classes to go through on Vimeo, so what I've decided to do is this:

1. Retire classes from 2020 + 2021 but make them downloadable (all except Dyed & Gone to Heaven which you will continue to have access to).

The other classes, however, will no longer be available to view from 1st January 2027.

2. I'm going to remove free videos I've created and place any personal family videos onto backup drives and then I can reassess the space.

3. I will review this situation yearly and in the event of me deciding that I will no longer use Vimeo, I will give ample notice to the art community and make every effort to inform people that they will be available to download by a certain date. All classes except, Dyed & Gone to Heaven.  I want more time to figure out what to do about this one.

So why is Dyed & Gone to Heaven excluded? 

1. This is a very unique class and is my intellectual property

2. It's an ongoing class i.e I teach it live at the end of every year - sharing any new discoveries with the students, so there is always the opportunity to stay updated with this class. 

3. It has a private facebook group attached to it with nearly 600 members and has an outstanding amount of information gathered over many years - no other class has this level of support.

Thank you - thank you - thank you - for your support with my online classes over the years and supporting me to live as a full time working artist. I want you to know, I never take that support for granted. 

Please go through the classes you have purchased in the 2020-2021 year period, and if I've missed making any available to download let me know!!