After Pulse: Sociopolitical Engagement as Joyful Collaborative Crafting

• In Event: Orchestrating Collaborative Play for Diverse Participation Across Contexts and Disciplines

Abstract

Purpose & Framework
This study examined how playful crafting can support socio-political engagement within online-offline learning settings. Following the mass shooting at Pulse, a gay bar in Florida, the Orlando Modern Quilt Guild issued a call for heart quilts to be distributed to affected people (Watson 2017). Play in this context refers to when the crafters collaboratively supported a cause yet enjoying themselves in an otherwise leisurely activity. Although quilting may be viewed as a playful activity, crafters leveraged their crafting passion as a healing gesture. We explored connections between the central heart quilt movement and a local implementation, delving into play-like processes that foster collaborative socio-political engagement. We fused craftivism, which views craft as a form of social change (Newmeyer 2008), with Connected Learning (Ito et al., 2020), personalized ways of organizing collaborative learning environments, to understand how engagement across settings can inform the design for playful socio-political learning.

Methods
We investigated social media data related to the movement, in-person observational, and social media data from a local craft group that participated in it. We thematically analyzed over 6,000 public social media posts to understand the craftivist characteristics, 106 posts on the quilt group’s page, field notes from in-person group meetings, and over 180 photographs of artifacts to understand how quilting practices foster engagement with the movement.

Results
The central movement brought together playful collaborative crafting with socio-political engagement across public and domestic spaces. Heart quilts were produced and sent to the guild from across the United States, from where they were distributed to recipients. The production of heart quilts involved the playful engagement with existing practices of quilting, including the appreciation and joy of the craft, the fostering of friendships among the quilters in the quilting group, as well as self-care among quilters. For example, one quilter commented on a completed quilt, ‘Oh, this quilt just seems like a visible hug.’ (Figure 3). Although we could not trace the destination of the local group’s quilts, other quilt recipients frequently posted photographs of the quilts they received on social media. For example, one recipient posed her newborn in front of a donated quilt, a tribute to her brother (Figure 4). Having the quilt populate both domestic and public spaces underscored the impact that crafting a quilt (i.e., leisurely activity) had on a grieving sister. Although this starkly contrasted to the grief of the cause, the practices presented the power of the material response to offer comfort meanwhile fostering a growing friendship between quilters.

Significance
Our results expand notions of activism by including playful engagement, presenting actionable steps toward supporting such engagement within hybrid online-offline learning spaces. The playful and leisurely actions, such as the local contributions to the craft movement, can produce real responses to injustice and grief. This has implications for educational designs seeking to broaden learning as socio-political engagement and how to build on existing playful and leisurely practices to produce comfort and support.

Authors

• Anna Keune, Technical University of Munich

• Nickolina Yankova, University of California - Irvine

• Kylie A. Peppler, University of California - Irvine