Stitching story and life together: Participatory textile making practices at a Harlem gallery

What brings a tourist from Italy, a lifelong resident of Harlem and a graduate student from a local university together? Crochet hooks, knitting needles, an assortment of green acrylic yarn and time and space for community craftivism. This case study focuses on crossing boundaries through participatory textile making, making time and space for relationship building in the changing neighbourhood of Harlem and practicing institutional stewardship as a ‘good neighbour’. The Walls-Ortiz Gallery and Center – the arts and research space of City Seminary of New York, an intercultural urban theological learning community – affords an opportunity to explore what happens when lives and stories are stitched together through participatory textile practices. Through the lenses of the EcCoWell learning neighbourhood approach and craftivism, this documentation and reflection of data from collaborative yarn bombing and community quilt-making projects over the past two years provide insights on lessons, challenges and opportunities of these community-oriented practices.

Knitting with my mother: Using interpretative phenomenological analysis and video to investigate the lived experience of dyadic crafting in dementia care

This article presents findings of a Ph.D. case study that uses interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to elicit a deep understanding of lived experience within the context of a ‘craft-encounter’ shared by an adult carer with her mother, who has dementia. Recent studies have evaluated the health and well-being benefits of participatory craft practice in community-based projects. However, a less examined site of research is the lived experience of participating in shared craft-encounters as a domiciliary based intervention for dementia care. This study elicits a nuanced understanding of lived experience of participatory textile-based craft and explores the value of working with video as an adjunct to IPA’s existing methodology as a way of attending to non-textual communication that is easily missed in the moment of occurrence. Reviewing primary-source video with participants produces additional data as a result of participants’ reflexivity and meaning-making through interpretation of video footage. The findings challenge the dominant bias that frames dementia care only in terms of losses without considering the potential gains and meanings of the dementia care experience.

The ‘Teal Quilt Project’: Understanding a community participatory textile making project as a site of research

The ‘Teal Quilt Project’ (TQP) offers an opportunity to understand participatory textile making activity as a site of research. It also provides insights into how research projects are instigated, sometimes because of unexpected opportunities that arise out of unanticipated circumstances, experiences or bodies of work. In this article, I will present the course of the TQP itself, how the related research was simultaneously constructed, some of our initial findings and plans for future research.

Making HUGs: Crafting well-being benefits through social manufacturing

New approaches to manufacturing that engage groups of individuals in collaborative making have the potential not only to generate economic benefit, but also to enhance the well-being of those involved. This article describes a small investigation into the well-being benefits expressed by a group of women who participated in a textile-based social manufacturing project in their local community. Outcomes include a small run of textile products and delivery of training for participants in small batch textile production. The purpose of the project – to manufacture a small batch of soft textile objects to be used in dementia care – is described. A small study is presented that utilizes data collected during this project. It evidences how social manufacturing can extend creative and social skills of participants, build resilience and enhance well-being. The participants in the study include a ‘self-reliant group’ of aspiring entrepreneurs from an economically deprived community and a university team comprising researchers, industry specialists and textile experts. Grounded practical theory and qualitative research methods inform the study. Data gathered using semi-structured video-recorded interviews and simple questionnaires is presented. Findings reveal individual and community benefits to participants from engaging in the project, including self-reported improvements in mental health and increased confidence. The study also reveals ways in which social manufacturing has the potential to build community cohesion and reduce social isolation. This work contributes to research concerning new types of sustainable manufacturing models. It presents an alternative to industrial manufacturing within socially disadvantaged communities and reveals ways in which social manufacturing has the potential to enhance individual and community well-being.

Stitching together: Ethical dimensions and innovative approaches to participatory textile making

This article, written by the coordinators of the Stitching Together network, introduces a diverse range of case studies that critically discuss participatory textile making activities, complementing a first collection of case studies that was provided in the previous volume of this journal. Drawing on a recent network event and the case studies included in this issue, the article outlines a number of ethical dimensions that arise in participatory textile making activities: first, the challenge of inclusivity; second, the vulnerabilities that arise when space is made for shared learning; third, the issue of communication between facilitators, participants and partners in collaborative projects; and fourth, the ways in which projects and participants are (re)presented in research findings. The theme of innovation is also discussed, with a focus on the participant experience. Looking to the future, the need for further collaborative interrogation of the complex questions raised through participatory textile work is highlighted. A good practice document, created with the input of network members, is highlighted as a potentially useful foundation for continued critical discussion.

‘Threads of Identity’: Uncovering the benefits and tensions found in the hand-sewn signature as a method of engagement to challenge stereotypes about embroidering with boys

This article describes a stitch-based research project that took place in 2016 in Manchester. It involved the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah Race Relations Archive, Burnage Academy for Boys and a professional embroiderer. Central to the enquiry is a signature cloth – a textile made up of hand-sewn autographs – used as a vehicle to explore young male identity and stereotypes about embroidery. The investigation signposts the flexibility of the signature that is utilized in the research to locate accessible activities and processes. In so doing, it formulates new avenues to access historical textile artefacts and illuminates their significance and contemporary relevance. The enquiry also outlines some of the tensions and dilemmas that permeate socially engaged practice(s) and offers new insights into the stitch-based collaborative/participatory process, in which the production of the tactile artefact is but one element; for alongside the stitch workshops a commemorative banner was a second outcome, made to memorialize a pupil killed in the school in a racially motivated crime in 1986. Shedding light on embroidery as a form of social engagement, the investigation also provides evidence of its applicability as an alternative, tactile means of communication. It similarly reveals and elucidates the dynamics inherent in this stitch-based community collaboration and draws attention to some of the planned and unexpected outcomes that emerge. The methodology offers a transparent model for those who may engage in similar practices and highlights its applicability to different audiences.

Re-Making fashion experience: A model for ‘participatory research through clothing design’

The article presents a participatory research model based on two case studies, involving the making of the research and the making of the clothing. In recent years, there has been growing interest in participatory design research, especially in relation to textiles and clothing. Various practice-based initiatives focused around the role, value and use of clothing have demonstrated success in developing and applying research methodologies aimed at activating or recording creative outcomes while staying attuned to participants’ experiential knowledge and feedback. Researchers working across social and design innovation contexts point to the urgent need for new cultures of sustainable practice that challenge the growth model through the sharing of expert and amateur knowledge and skills. Consequently, an important opportunity now exists to more formally explicate a transferable model of principles for participatory engagement through making together. Based on a critical analysis of two consecutive collaborative research inquiries, this article posits a working model of ‘participatory research through clothing design’. The authors suggest that the model, consisting of five stages of participation: (1) communicating and listening, (2) involving, (3) activating and responding, (4) consulting and (5) sharing, offers a useful pathway when considering craft-based research aspirations and goals. The authors seek to highlight some of the practical opportunities and ethical responsibilities faced by researchers when making with others, while delineating some of the challenges and potential pitfalls raised by both case studies.

Fabricating herstory: Using embroidery to map Bedouin tribal borders in South Sinai

Research into Bedouin culture by predominantly male scholars has tended to rely on analysing nineteenth-century traveller accounts, Cartesian maps and documenting oral histories. Much less attention has been paid to the role of Bedouin women’s handicrafts as a form of mapping and cultural knowledge production. In this article I reflect on the impact of commissioning an embroidered map of the Sinai during a British Academy/Leverhulme funded research project on Bedouin tribal borders and consider how collaborative engagements with traditional women’s handicrafts can be used as a form of artistic research practice, historical analysis and community mapping.

Using Art as Research in Learning and Teaching: Multidisciplinary Approaches Across the Arts, Ross W. Prior (ed.), Foreword by Shaun McNiff (2018)

Review of: Using Art as Research in Learning and Teaching: Multidisciplinary Approaches Across the Arts, Ross W. Prior (ed.), Foreword by Shaun McNiff (2018) Bristol: Intellect, 225 pp., ISBN 978-1-78320-892-0, p/bk, £25.00

Disobedient Theatre – A Toolkit for Change facilitated by Aylwyn Walsh and Paul Routledge

Disobedient Theatre – A Toolkit for Change, facilitated by Aylwyn Walsh and Paul Routledge Old Bridge Street Church, Leeds, UK, 5 October 2019