Digitally Augmenting Traditional Craft Practices for Social Justice

Book excerpt: This book weaves together disparate worlds of crafting, social justice, and digital technologies around The Partnership Quilt. It crafts a manifesto for meaningful action and design processes in charitable organizations through participatory sewing and its digital augmentation. The book charts a history of how sewing has been used to voice concerns of oppression, and how digital technologies can be embedded into textiles to tell stories more powerfully. It explores the relationship between quilting and research, looking beyond the seams of The Partnership Quilt to shed light on the importance of invisible work behind such participatory, justice-oriented design projects. It concludes with a discussion of the impacts and potential future avenues for research on digitally quilting social justice. “This book is an excellent offering that highlights ways in which visual approaches to research and community work can serve as a canvas for the outpouring of oppression, anger, hope, resilience and reimagining of a socially just future. It is a great gift and valuable resource for academics, activists and students interested in social justice, participatory action research, and digital technologies.” —Puleng Segalo, Professor, University of South Africa, SA “This expansive undertaking exhibits Strohmayer’s force as a thinker, author, and partner in design. From the soldering of electrodes through the review on craft-based activism, Strohmayer generously takes us through a design process from start to finish to examines the relationships that shift along the way. She shows us how worlds of textiles partake in the making of collective futures—nurturing forms of connection as a means of creative expression, self-determination, and remembrance.” —Daniela Rosner, Associate Professor, Human Centered Design & Engineering, University of Washington, USA “This book is a highlight for the courageous minds to break the circle and re-think artistic practices as a more justice-oriented, connected and collaborative mechanisms for our futures. You will have a journey to face who and what forms of designs were privileged or silenced in the global history of quilting. You will be inspired and provoked by the making of the Partnership Quilt. The quilt piece is the materialized example that embodies the many ways of touchy-feely conversations and the possibilities to weave, stitch -or this time to quilt new worlds together. This book is about the making of artistic hope. It is about what is possible, once we see the beauty of equity instead of privileges in design.” —Özge Subaşı, Futurewell, Assistant Professor, Department of Media and Visual Arts, Koç University, Turkey "The Partnership Quilt is a powerful example of the transformative power of craftivism. In this book Dr Angelika Strohmayer pragmatically illustrates how carefully considered participatory craft based projects empower those involved, value-add to the important work being done by NGO’s and provide researchers with a methodology that supports and promotes social justice outcomes." —Dr Tal Fitzpatrick, Artist, Craftivist and Disability Support Worker, Naarm (Melbourne), Australia ‘’The Partnership Quilt, as a model of participatory textile making, draws together relational expertise from the distinct worlds of communication technologies, crafting and ecologies of care. With a focus on collaboration, Strohmayer experiments with the quilt as a metaphor for a layered, interdisciplinary research process as well as a material expression of carefully crafted relationships between makers, researchers, charitable organisations and a marginalised group of sex workers. This richly detailed and insightful book is a timely addition to a growing literature around participatory textile making advocating for interdisciplinary practices that address the care and maintenance of people’s lived experiences.’’ —Dr Emma Shercliff, Arts University Bournemouth, UK