Techne
Supporting reference and research material:

Remembering Practices - Reference Projects:  

Writing: 

Focus: Oral Histories as remembering practice

Methods: Poetry, Storytelling, Literary histories, Language, Performative reading, Listening practices, Fictioned archives

Indicative Bibliography:

Dr. Jacqueline Millner - The language of textiles 

Dr Storm Greenwood - Devotional citation,  language and performative reading connected to research and making practices

Dr. Budhaditya Chattopadhyay - On listening

Nina Erikson - On performative reading as remembering, personal loss

Anne Boyer - On making and writing 

Anne Truit - The Journal of an Artist - On artist’s writings 

Joshua Leon - Artist’s writings, on archive and diaspora 

Teresa Kroenung - Journal writing as research

Untold Narratives - Refugee narratives as care through memory

Clarissa Pinkola Estés - a ‘Cantadora’ ‘the one who hands down myths and stories by word of mouth,  a storyteller’: ‘She grew up in the now vanished oral tradition of her immigrant, refugee families’ - on intergenerational remembrance through story, consideration of the sacred 

Carlos Miguel Gomez -  ‘Autoethnographic Journals’ - Journaling practices as autoethnographic research 

Dr. Suely Rolkin - Remaking archival practices through writing

Dr. Saidiya Hartman - Archival Fictions + Histories 

Louise Glück - Oral Histories, remembering, re-telling
Muriel Rukeyser - Documentary poetry 

Ocean Vuong - On loss and remembrance, personal grief 

Walter Benjamin - The symbiotic role of making and oral histories in remembering 

Own Practice - Documentary Poetry

Placemaking:

Focus: Mitigating ecological sorrow, remembering place as care, situating place as care

Methods: Photography, Walking, Nature Collecting, Growing, Dyeing, Recording, Making, Weaving, Psychogeographies

Indicative Bibliography:

Rebecca Mayo - Connecting to place through creative practice and nature-based social arts practice 

Craig Mod - Ethnography through walking 

Michal Iwanowski - Ethnography through walking migration 

Hildur Bjarnadóttir - Using plants as a source of pigment in connection to place and person

Dr Nishat Awan - Documenting loss of home and place, remembering home and place through filmmaking, the role of beauty in remembering place 

Azadeh Fatehrad - Nature based community integration

Research by Azedah Fatehrad: Nature-based integration - informing thinking on placemaking in East London. Connecting to UCL’s theme of ecology, I would like to make a space within the research for placemaking, home, and sense of place through nature based integration, for example outdoor making workshops.

https://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/project/nature-based-integration-connecting-communities-with-in-nature#:~:text=The%20Nature%2DBased%20Integration%20project,the%20role%20of%20natural%20settings. 

Placemaking, ethnography, cultural sustainability by Craig Mod:
https://craigmod.com/ridgeline/071/

Migrant ethnography by walking, Michal Iwanwowski: https://www.michaliwanowski.com/go-home-polish

Own practice: Weaving - documenting place through motif, photography, walking and nature based research
Own practice - Dye plants as cultivating place based connection

Keepsaking:

Focus: Ephemera as remembering practice

Methods: Painting, Writing, Filming, Photography, Collecting, Documenting, Accumulating, Saving, Preserving, Conserving

Indicative Bibliography:

‘MOLAF’ -  The Museum of Longing and Failure - Exhibited Objects
Amy Elkins, - The Weaver’s Handshake’ - Craft as Encounter, Archival Film  

The Living Refugee Archive - Object Archiving 

Azadeh Fatehrad - ‘A community archive of migrant artefacts’ (Connection to placemaking)
Osman Yousefzada - ‘An Immigrant’s Room of Her Own’ (2023)  - ‘She is always arriving’ (Connection to placemaking)

Ann Laura Stoler - Deconstructing archives 

Own practice - ‘Objects of Migration’ (‘Privileged Movement’ 2024) 

Additional Textiles References:

Common Threads, Oshana, Makani:

Trauma recovery and textiles making for refugees in Ecuador, Nepal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Seattle, and New York - I am really interested in this project in connection to London’s resettling Afghan, Syrian and Ukrainian refugees, and IGP’s connections to Lebanon, and the charities Oshana and Makani:

https://commonthreadsproject.org/home 

Oshana - ‘A dignified income’ Syrian refugee women, making in Lebanon
https://oshana.co.uk/

Makani -
’Our vision is a world of freedom, equality and dignity
for all refugee women and girls.’
https://www.makani.org.uk/

Traces: Stories of Migration, Lucy Orta:

‘Exploring textile practices as a medium through which diverse cultural and social experiences of migrant communities can be acknowledged and celebrated.’

https://www.studio-orta.com/fr/artwork/901/traces-stories-of-migration-story-cloths 

https://www.sustainable-fashion.com/traces-stories-of-migration 

Decolonising Fashion and Textiles:

‘Design for Cultural Sustainability with Refugee Communities. Participatory action research aimed to explore the concepts of cultural sustainability and community resilience through the lived experience of refugees.’

https://www.sustainable-fashion.com/decolonising-fashion-and-textiles  

Reference Literature/Resources:

Literature including frameworks for integration, impact reports, docufilms, government analysis on resettlement, the role of textiles in peacemaking, collaborative international research projects, and the role of ecology and nature in integration all inform my thinking and development of ideas.

‘Textiles Making Peace’: Christine Andrä

‘International collaborative research project… to examine what textiles and textile-making can contribute to peace efforts’

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77954-2_125 

Awamaki, a textile making NPO:

The 2017 impact report from Awamaki notes social indicators such as cooperatives made up of 170 women makers, over the course of 40 workshops, supporting 713 family members. Their short film ‘Awana’ also notes cultural sustainability, and the role of women makers in economies and communities. I worked with Awamaki in 2019 in women’s making circles, and this work has informed the development of my research.

https://issuu.com/awamaki/docs/awamaki_annual_report_2017 

Stitching Palestine - A documentary on migrant women’s stories through embroidery practices: 

https://forwardfilmproduction.com/ftagem_portfolio/stitching-palestine/ 

International Organisation for Migration’s Indicator’s Integration Framework:
https://unitedkingdom.iom.int/2019-indicators-integration-framework 

Government analysis on refugee resettlement:

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/refugee-resettlement-analysis 

Practice based research, relevant existing projects, collaboration partners, and potential participants: 

Social Action for Health, Tower Hamlets - Charity research engagement in East London:

https://www.safh.org.uk/community-research 

https://www.safh.org.uk/focus-groups 

Afghan Women’s Support Group, active contact and therapeutic context:
http://reap.org.uk/about-reap/afghan-women-support-group-hayes-ub3/ 

East London Citizens:
https://www.citizensuk.org/chapters/east-london/

MA Research
informing my proposal

My MA research, detailed in the above diagram, considered the development of a praxis of Caring Cloth, which informs my practice and research going forward. Below, is the working definition of Caring Cloth praxis, and the ingredients which make up care-led social textiles practice in community:

a praxis inclusive of ‘radical compassion’, 

where systems are created for the voices of individual women and a collective of women to be heard, 

feminist methodologies inform care, through interculturality and solidarity, 

‘The needle is used to repair damage’,

whilst ‘difference is a spark’ for creativity, 

the praxis a ‘fertile ground’ for reimaginings, 

the voices of caring cloth and it’s makers form new kinds of textbooks, storybooks, and history books; 

feelings and doings alongside these, as equally valued and valuable epistemologies - 

harm reconciled into generational healing, 

spending ‘care time’ 

within community, where ‘enough is exchanged to enrich’ and pay forward, 

knowing that there are ‘possibilities that can only be imagined as other things fell into place’.

These learnings provide a working definition of caring cloth praxis, which offers a possible response for how to care through cloth, how cloth’s story could be one of care, and how to develop socially engaged textiles practice with women globally through care. 

References here