A recent post here by Heather got me thinking about a few organizations that work with individuals that have been through tough times express their myriad emotions in a creative (and sometimes therapeutic and/or meditative) way.
Fundacion Solaridad is one such organization in Chile. Founded decades ago in a tumultuous political situation, it began with the mission “to increase the earnings, market insertion and social participation of those people, families and groups who, by their own efforts, seek to overcome poverty and improve their quality of life by producing handicrafts and non-industrial objects in autonomous workshops and microbusinesses.”
While the above image speaks towards a positive future, some of the images are more grim, depicting the scores of missing individuals and what happened to them during the reign of Pinochet.
Another group that I greatly admire is Fine Cell Work, who teaches needlepoint to inmates allowing them to acquire a skill as well as keeping them busy during downtime.
I get asked a lot why I think craft is political. To me the answer lies in the old adage that “the personal is political.” By expressing our inner discontent with the state of the outside world via creative paths, we rechannel those negative emotions into more positive ones. By choosing to make something with our own hands vs. buying something pre-made, we are creating our own tiny revolutions. (Yes, someone does make the wool -in most cases, because you can make your own!-, but if we choose to buy wool that’s produced ethically then we are helping handmade and ensuring the livelihoods of those like us) By walking into a store and saying “I can make that” and then recreating something similar, then we are becoming our own designers. By choosing to purchase something handmade by a person, we are raising a tiny fist to the big giant corporate world saying “creativity makes a difference.”
It makes a difference not only in our own lives in our own comfortable homes, but also in the lives of those who are not as lucky.
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It’s not about craft, but have you checked out the book Design Anarchy?
Adbusters has it at https://secure.adbusters.org/orders/designanarchy/ It points to ways that design and art can negatively affect society and how we can look to design and aesthetics as a way to move towards a better future.
I think even beyond the implications of buying out by making something. Art and craft can have carefully and creatively constructed political meaning. Often it is a way to get people to look at things they’d otherwise ignore!
I was briefly involved with a very very cool art project called The Clothesline Project (http://www.clotheslineproject.org/).
This group goes to battered women’s shelters and other places of crisis and gives abuse survivors T-shirts to express their experiences on. The T-shirts then become a traveling art exhibit and are hung on clotheslines as a way of “airing the dirty laundry” within the community.
Each T-shirt is incredibly moving and a real piece of art, and I can tell you from my own experiences with it that this is craft truly making a difference, both in the healing of the survivors and in the education of the community.
I think craft as politics often pinpoints injustice far more than any politician or media release.
thank you for posting fine cell.
that blows my mind in the best possible way.
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