The group assembled at a music festival in the eastern hilltown of Darjeeling on Thursday, nearly three weeks after the brutal rape and murder of a student on a moving bus in New Delhi brought an outpouring of national anger.
“We chose this song because it talks about hope, peace and promise,†said Sonam Bhutia, tourism secretary of Darjeeling and one of the festival organisers.
“The song is so inspiring. It talks about a universe without any boundaries,†Bhutia said of the 1971 Lennon track.
“The tribute was a gesture on our part to show that we are with the victim’s family in their hour of unimaginable sorrow.â€
The savage attack on the woman has triggered countrywide protests with calls for better safety and an overhaul of laws governing crimes against women.
So, the wonderful Craftivist Collective needs your help in writing their book! I’ve given money to this project and fully support and believe in it, and hope you will, too.
To learn more, check out the video below and their words about the book:
What We Need & What You Get
We need £6,000 to produce a small book of craftivism. It sounds like a lot but we want a high quality beautiful thing people will keep and share. It will
explain the and benefit of craftivism for maker, viewer and reciever
have a gallery of things we’ve done for people to do or be inspired to do their own stuff
and a selection of how-to projects
We’ve got all the contents of the book pretty much sorted, and, in the spirit of Craftivism, are dreaming of putting something out in the world that is beautiful, cherished, shared, and inspires people to do something similar. If you have any suggestions of content and style, send us an email.
Cicada Books, the publishing company, are supporting us, by putting up half of the money. That gives us the chance to grow this little book from the roots up. We want your support, and we would be proud to have your name in a list of Craftivists and supporters at the back of the book. Craftivism is a movement, for anyone to be part of.
Cicada specialise in high-end art, craft, and design books. They create quirky, alternative books that reflect the unique voices of the artists. They’re a perfect fit for our small but ambitious project.
Cicada focuses on collaborations with new and emerging design talents from all over the world. the books have a quirky, alternative edge that reflects the individual voices of the artists and writers involved. Cicada captures the essence of movements and scenes in the artworld that are happening right now.
Cicada Books will then put the book together (we’ve already been dreaming about paper stock!), and distribute into bookshops worldwide with the help of Thames & Hudson Publishers.
The Impact
Currently there are no little accessible introductory books to craftivism.
We want to create something that you can leave next to the toilet, give as a cheap gift to a friend, or pick up at the till of an art bookshop. We want people to be able to make their own project, and think about global issues of justice in while putting something beautiful out there in the world.
In the words of the collective ‘A spoonful of craft helps the activism go down’.
We’d like you to help us administer this rather delightful medicine! :)
Guess what?! ArtRage Gallery is having a craftivism exhibition! Interested in taking part?! Read on below the photo!
ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse, NY, a non-profit activist art organization, is currently seeking art for an exhibition on craftivism set for November/December 2013.
If you would like your work to be considered for this group exhibition please contact kimberley@artragegallery.org.
We are looking for fiber work of all shapes and sizes and on a wide range of social/environmental issues.
In your email include either a website link where we can view your work or attach up to five images. Deadline: January 13, 2013
Thanks and feel free to share this email with your craftivist community!
The ArtRage mission is to exhibit progressive art that inspires resistance and promotes social awareness; supports social justice, challenges preconceptions and encourages cultural change. Our goal is to provide ArtRage visitors with an experience that encourages the breakdown of boundaries so that people can see themselves in the work and then in one another. And that, we believe, is the seed of a movement for cultural and social change.
Text and photos below from around the blogosphere, click for original article:
The project aims, in their own words, “to embroider hope and memory.†When they get a considerable number of embroidered handkerchiefs, they will be display them in public squares all over the country.
On a warm day during May, a group of women knitting, sitting, talking, draw the attention of onlookers who come closer: three young men from Barcelona, Aram, Gabriel and William.
– What are you doing? – they ask the women.
– We are embroidering for peace-, the women answer in chorus.
– So is it true that you are at war? … –
– Not only at war, they have taken our children … –
They are mothers, sisters and relatives of missing people, who come together in the collective LUPA (Fight for Love, Truth and Justice, Nuevo León), and they meet every Thursday at 10 am, at the kiosk Lucila Sabella, at the Macroplaza in Monterrey.
Teresa Vera is stitching on a side street of the Plaza. Alfredo, a member of the Fuentes Rojas (Red Fountains) movement, embroiders cloth. The threads tell of the unidentified body that was found near the University of Cuernavaca March 5, 2012. “In less than a year there have been more than 60 dead in this city alone. The disappeared are even more,†Alfredo says.
He encourages people to stitch a handkerchief, in a sort of collective embroidery to give names to the number of dead. Teresa’s handkerchief is number 826 of the 63,000 planned to be embroidered all over the country. Their quantity echoes the number of fatal victims in this war for the last six years.
This is a video from Rayna Fahey that for some strange reason I never posted. However, on the internet, it’s never too late!
From Rayna’s original post on this:
The Making and Baking.. was born out of a desire to contribute to the conversation about the value of handmade. All too often purveyors of handmade goods find themselves having to justify their prices in the face of mass production of co
