Craftivism and Yarn Bombing: A Criminological Exploration 1137579900, 9781137579904

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements......Page 7
Praise for Craftivism and Yarn Bombing......Page 10
Contents......Page 11
List of Figures......Page 13
Abstract......Page 14
The Research Project and Its Aims......Page 18
Yarn Bombing and Craftivism......Page 20
Chapter Overview......Page 21
References......Page 22
Abstract......Page 24
The Origins of Craftivism......Page 25
War Craftivism......Page 28
Anti-colonial and Anti-slavery Craftivism......Page 31
Economic and Anti-capitalist Craftivism......Page 35
Environmental and Eco-craftivism......Page 40
Health Craftivism......Page 44
Social Justice Craftivism......Page 45
Gendered Violence and Bodily Autonomy Craftivism......Page 54
The Logics of Craftivism......Page 58
References......Page 60
Abstract......Page 71
Defining Yarn Bombing......Page 73
The Origins of Yarn Bombing......Page 78
Controversies and Criticisms......Page 80
Understanding Yarn Bombers and Their Motivations......Page 83
Making People Smile, Generating Joy, and Beautification......Page 84
Reclaiming and Softening of Public Space, Rejecting Commercialisation, and Building Communities......Page 88
Raising Awareness, Memorialisation, and Promoting Communities......Page 92
Making a Statement, Protest, and Championing Change......Page 95
References......Page 100
Abstract......Page 104
Crime, Criminality, and Legal Framing of Yarn Bombing......Page 105
Framing Yarn Bombers: Destructive Criminals or Harmless Knitters?......Page 107
Deviance, Risk, and Subversion......Page 114
Thrill-Seeking, Edgework and the Carnival of Crime......Page 118
References......Page 121
Abstract......Page 124
Research Findings......Page 126
References......Page 128
Index......Page 129

Citation preview

CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES

Craftivism and Yarn Bombing A Criminological Exploration

Alyce McGovern

Critical Criminological Perspectives Series Editors Reece Walters Faculty of Law Deakin University Burwood, VIC, Australia Deborah H. Drake Department of Social Policy & Criminology The Open University Milton Keynes, UK

The Palgrave Critical Criminological Perspectives book series aims to showcase the importance of critical criminological thinking when examining problems of crime, social harm and criminal and social justice. Critical perspectives have been instrumental in creating new research agendas and areas of criminological interest. By challenging state defined concepts of crime and rejecting positive analyses of criminality, critical criminological approaches continually push the boundaries and scope of criminology, creating new areas of focus and developing new ways of thinking about, and responding to, issues of social concern at local, national and global levels. Recent years have witnessed a flourishing of critical criminological narratives and this series seeks to capture the original and innovative ways that these discourses are engaging with contemporary issues of crime and justice. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14932

Alyce McGovern

Craftivism and Yarn Bombing A Criminological Exploration

Alyce McGovern School of Social Sciences UNSW Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

Critical Criminological Perspectives ISBN 978-1-137-57990-4 ISBN 978-1-137-57991-1  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Limited, part of Springer Nature 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Pivot imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

For Mum

Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time in the making and, as such, there are many people who I need to thank, not only for their enthusiasm in the subject matter and my capacity to write something meaningful about it, but also for their assistance in the process. First of all, thanks must go to the yarn bombers and craftivists who I interviewed for this book. Their thoughts, reflections, and insights made for a fascinating and rich dataset which really brought to life their experiences and motivations, confirming for me the value of this project. Big thanks too must go to the School of Social Sciences at UNSW Sydney, who provided me with the funding that allowed me to work on this project as well as present its preliminary findings at various conferences around the world. To my fabulous Research Assistants, Leah Findlay and Laura Wajnryb McDonald, thank you not only for your help with transcribing interviews and collecting literature, but also your wise counsel as I mused over various aspects of the project with you both. While there were many colleagues along the way who provided a kind ear or helpful word, particular praise must go to those who regularly provided me with the reassurance, encouragement, and occasional humorous memes that I needed to keep going. Catherine Bond, Marc Williams, Ian Warren, and Elaine Fishwick, I owe you all a great deal and I hope I can repay the favour. Elaine, your ongoing support for and feedback on my work was invaluable and I cannot express how much I appreciate your continued faith in me. vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Finally, to Rob, I continue to be amazed at how understanding you are. Not once did you ever complain about the many weekends and evenings I spent locked away in the studio putting words on the page. Your level of support was, and always is, invaluable in helping me do what I do.

Epigraph ‘Yarn bombing is a technique that merges street graffiti with the fibre work of knitting or crochet. Also known as ‘yarn storming’, ‘knit graffiti’ and ‘guerrilla knitting’, yarn bombing involves stealthily attaching handmade fibre items to street fixtures or parts of the urban landscape. These could be small and discreet installations on a bench handle or railing, or large and audacious pieces such as a tree wrap, or a cover for a bus’. (Mann 2014: 2)

Yarn bombed trees 2014, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern) ix

Praise

for

Craftivism and Yarn Bombing

“Yarn-bombed army tanks, hand-woven protest blockades, knit-ins against global capitalism and assorted ‘misogynist knit-wits’, quilts encoded with subversion and memory – all of this and more populate the pages of Alyce McGovern’s wonderful Craftivism and Yarn Bombing: A Criminological Exploration. To make sense of it all, McGovern does some careful knitting of her own, looping together issues of cultural politics, gendered resistance, feminist activism, and public community with insights from critical and cultural criminology. The result is a beautiful book, as fascinating as it is important.” —Jeff Ferrell, author of Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality “Alyce McGovern follows a fascinating thread that leads us from the participatory pleasures of yarn bombing through the motivations of craftivists and guerrilla knitters to fundamental questions about how and why we define criminality. A timely and thoughtful account of crime and craft in the city.” —Alison Young, Professor of Criminology, The University of Melbourne, Australia

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Contents

1 Introduction 1 The Research Project and Its Aims 5 Yarn Bombing and Craftivism 7 Chapter Overview 8 References 9 2 Unravelling the Threads: Contemporary Craftivism and Its Origins 11 The Origins of Craftivism 12 War Craftivism 15 Anti-colonial and Anti-slavery Craftivism 18 Economic and Anti-capitalist Craftivism 22 Environmental and Eco-craftivism 27 Health Craftivism 31 Social Justice Craftivism 32 Gendered Violence and Bodily Autonomy Craftivism 41 The Logics of Craftivism 45 References 47 3 The Itch to Stitch: Yarn Bombers and Their Motivations 59 Defining Yarn Bombing 61 The Origins of Yarn Bombing 66 Controversies and Criticisms 68 xiii

xiv   

Contents

Understanding Yarn Bombers and Their Motivations 71 Making People Smile, Generating Joy, and Beautification 72 Reclaiming and Softening of Public Space, Rejecting Commercialisation, and Building Communities 76 Raising Awareness, Memorialisation, and Promoting Communities 80 Making a Statement, Protest, and Championing Change 83 References 88 4 Craft Attack: The Framing of Yarn Bombing 93 Crime, Criminality, and Legal Framing of Yarn Bombing 94 Framing Yarn Bombers: Destructive Criminals or Harmless Knitters? 96 How Yarn Bombers Frame Their Practice 103 Deviance, Risk, and Subversion 103 Thrill-Seeking, Edgework and the Carnival of Crime 107 References 110 5 Crafty Crimes: The Criminology of Craftivism 113 Research Findings 115 References 117 Index 119

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 2.3 Fig. 2.4 Fig. 2.5 Fig. 2.6 Fig. 2.7 Fig. 3.1 Fig. 3.2 Fig. 3.3 Fig. 3.4 Fig. 3.5

Christmas themed yarn bombing installation commissioned by Melbourne City Council 2018, Melbourne, Australia 3 Quilted banner flown at Greenham Common on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia 19 NIKE Blanket Petition on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia 24 Example from the Crochet Coral Reef project on exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design 2016, New York, United States 28 Example from the Crochet Coral Reef project on exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design 2016, New York, United States 29 Example of arpillera quilt block on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia 39 Carrie Reichardt’s Tiki Love Truck on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia 40 The logics of craftivism 46 Yarn bombed tree 2013, Melbourne, Australia 60 Yarn bombed trees 2013, Melbourne, Australia 62 Yarn bombed street sign 2015, Sydney, Australia 63 Yarn bombed bike racks 2015, Sydney, Australia 64 Furby yarn bombing on fence 2016, Brooklyn, United States 65

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Abstract  This introductory chapter sets the context for the book and its content. Beginning by detailing the foundations of the research project that culminated in the book, the chapter establishes craftivism and yarn bombing as important sites for criminological enquiry. The chapter also considers the potential benefits of participatory politics for the discipline, before outlining the structure and format of the book. Keywords  Yarn bombing Craftivism

· Criminology · Participatory politics ·

A group of us stood back from the street sign, phones in hand, ready to snap the perfect photo to share on our social media accounts. As the knitted creation was being stitched into place, our instructor provided advice on the best way to secure a yarn bomb to a pole to ensure its longevity. While the installation was in progress, a few curious passers-by slowed down to find out what was holding our attention. Our instructor made large, looping motions as they used a needle threaded with wool to secure the creation into place along the length of the pole, atop of which sat a parking sign. It was a Saturday afternoon and, along with a dozen others, I was nearing the end of a workshop on yarn bombing, which culminated in a small piece of knitted wool being attached to a pole alongside a busy inner-city street. The whole process took less than five minutes, resulting in a multicoloured © The Author(s) 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1_1

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length of knitting—complete with tassels and other embellishments— being attached to the pole, inconspicuous to all but the most observant of pedestrians and drivers. Fast forward a couple of years and I just happened to be in the vicinity of the workshop’s original location. Glancing down the street to where the yarn bomb had been situated, I was surprised to see it still there, albeit hanging limp and faded, almost indistinguishable from the pole to which it was attached. *** As someone who has cross-stitched, embroidered, and sewed as a hobby for many years, when I first became aware of the practice of yarn bombing, my interest was purely personal. ‘What a cool idea’, I thought, wishing I was a more adept knitter so I could perhaps try it out myself. My personal interest soon turned professional, however, as I reflected on what I had come to know about the practice and considered how and why criminologists might find it of interest. What first sparked my scholarly interests were questions over the legality of yarn bombing. How was it that people were doing this without there seeming to be any repercussions? Anecdotally, the practice appeared relatively uncontroversial, for the most part accepted, or at least tolerated, by the communities in which it appeared and certainly not subject to much, if any, official police intervention as far as I could determine. While other forms of street art and graffiti continue to raise the ire and praise of the public and ­officials in equal measure, on the face of it there seemed to be relatively little apprehension about, or backlash to, the practice of attaching knitted items to public objects. I wondered, too, how law enforcement officials might react should they encounter someone putting up a piece of knitting in public space. The answer to this question only became murkier when local councils in more recent years embraced the practice, commissioning yarn ­bombing crews to install knitted and crocheted designs in prominent public settings (see for example Fig. 1.1; City of Melbourne 2013 and Horn 2014). While as a crafter I was excited by the way this new discovery might influence my own crafting practice, as a researcher, my criminological imagination had also been ignited. Beyond the legal status of the practice, there were other questions that soon bubbled up to the surface the more I investigated yarn bombing, like: What would motivate someone to knit things and put them up in public? And how did they actually carry this out

1 INTRODUCTION 

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Fig. 1.1  Christmas themed yarn bombing installation commissioned by Melbourne City Council 2018, Melbourne, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

in practice? I also wondered who these ‘knitting guerrillas’ were, and what did they have to say about their experiences of yarn bombing. I was further curious about the relationship beween yarn bombing and other forms of street art and graffiti. More fundamentally, I also wondered whether the answers to these questions may even reveal something that gets to the very heart of what many criminologists are centrally

4  A. McGOVERN

concerned with, namely what constitutes a ‘crime’ and who we label as ‘criminal’. The more I researched the practice, the more I realised the relevance and utility of criminological (and other) perspectives in exploring this phenomenon. Questions of motivation, for example, on the surface seemed likely to intersect strongly with the work of cultural criminologists, who are interested in exploring ‘risky’, ‘thrill seeking’, and ‘carnivalesque’ behaviours, and the reasons why people choose to engage in ‘illicit’ activities (Lyng 1990, 2005; Ferrell 1993; Zwick 2005; Presdee 2000; Cresswell 1994). Similarly, I considered what critical theorists, who explore the ways in which actors in society engage in practices of resistance, may have to say about themes of gender, public space, power, and more as they relate to yarn bombing (De Certeau 1998; Cresswell 1992). Indeed, it quickly became evident that, despite appearances, the ‘whimsical’ act of yarn bombing had much to offer those of us interested in analysing social, political, environmental, and economic questions that characterise contemporary society, core themes in much of the work of critical and cultural criminologists. Furthermore, as I have expanded my enquiry in this space to consider how yarn bombing is situated within the wider craftivist movement, which I explain in detail below, it is evident that there are opportunities for us to reflect not only on the sorts of subject areas we as criminologists engage with, but also the way we as scholars present and communicate our work, including what Close (2018: 867) terms ‘participatory politics’ and intersectional activism. This research has expanded my thinking with regards to not only what, but also how issues of crime, justice, gender, and race (to name a few) can be investigated and disseminated beyond the production of ‘academic’ texts. In an era where scholars are increasingly being asked to account for the ways our work engages with the community and makes an ‘impact’, looking outside the academic sphere to both gather and share our knowledge becomes increasingly relevant. Participatory politics—‘interactive, peer-based acts through which individuals and groups seek to exert both voice and influence on issues of public concern’ through activities such as investigation, dialogue and feedback, circulation, production, and mobilisation (Kahne et al. 2015: 41)—can be another avenue through which we as scholars undertake, communicate and activate our work. Similarly, such approaches urge us to pay greater attention to the historical context of intersectional activism and what has or should

1 INTRODUCTION 

5

contribute to criminological enquiry. As Porter (2019: 132) argues, we must acknowledge ‘the contributions of First Nations scholars, artists and activists [which have been] overwhelmingly ignored in criminological research and curricula’. It was with these questions and considerations in mind that I embarked on a criminological exploration of craftivism and yarn bombing.

The Research Project and Its Aims As noted above, this study is centrally concerned with the practice of yarn bombing. Also known as knitting graffiti, guerrilla knitting, yarn storming, knit bombing and even granny graffiti, yarn bombing—the practice of affixing knitted or crocheted yarn to public objects—is a form of street craft that has gained popularity over the last decade or so, often spotted in urban, inner city locations around the world. The woollen creations that characterise a yarn bomb vary in scope and design, from large, expansive installations that involve multiple contributors and patterns, through to more modest pieces, smaller in scale and often created and installed by the same individual. Unlike some other forms of street art, yarn bombing is relatively easily removed. While some pieces may stay in situ for years—as was the case in the workshop example detailed in the opening of this chapter—the relative ease with which installations can be removed, typically with a pair of scissors, means that hours, days, and even months’ worth of work can disappear in an instant, cut off and discarded in the trash by local council workers, removed and claimed by inquisitive citizens (often at the encouragement of the installer, see e.g. McNally 2016), or even taken down by the yarn bomber themselves, keen to dispatch of pieces that are no longer colourful or eye-catching. To explore this phenomenon and those who practice it, the research was guided by four core questions: 1. What is yarn bombing and who is doing it? 2. What motivates individuals or groups to yarn bomb? 3. How do yarn bombers frame or articulate their experience of yarn bombing? 4. How may criminological (or other) theoretical perspectives help to understand yarn bombing?

6  A. McGOVERN

As the project evolved, a fifth question was also added: 5. How can yarn bombing be understood as part of the wider craftivism movement? To answer these questions, I embarked on an ethnographic study of yarn bombing. To do this I conducted a series of qualitative, semi-structured research interviews with fifteen yarn bombers—female and male, ranging in age from late teens to 60s—from the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Germany. My approach to these interviews was similar to Young’s (2014) research with street artists; that is, I was interested in knowing yarn bombers and their practice by speaking with them about their ‘histories, experiences and desires’ (Young 2014: 24). As such, interviewees were asked a series of questions about their introduction into yarn bombing; their definition or conceptualisation of yarn bombing; their own yarn bombing practices and whether they had a particular style or signature; their motivations and objectives for yarn bombing; the feelings and emotions they associated with yarn bombing; whether they perceived yarn bombing to be a ‘risky’ activity and whether and how ‘risk’ factored into their participation; their perception of the relationship between yarn bombing and other forms of street art or graffiti; public reactions and responses to their yarn bombing; how they document and keep record of their yarn bombs; and the significance of groups, networks, or online communities to their yarn bombing. The questions were designed to elicit rich descriptions from interviewees, which were then thematically analysed to acquire a deeper appreciation for the experiences and perspectives of yarn bombers, and a more detailed picture of the phenomenon of yarn bombing. This data was supplemented by the collation and analysis of a series of artefacts relating to yarn bombing, such as: news media articles on yarn bombing that provided insights into public discourse and frames; manifestos written by yarn bombers and craftivists that detailed the motivations and agendas of those participating in these acts; and photographs taken of yarn bomb installations that were encountered incidentally in public spaces. Each of these forms of data added another layer of information to the study, allowing for a greater understanding of how and why yarn bombing is practiced, as well as the way it is conceptualised and perceived by both yarn bombers themselves and the wider community. This book presents

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some of the key findings from this study, and establishes a foundation for further research into both the practice of yarn bombing and the movement of craftivism more broadly. Yarn Bombing and Craftivism While yarn bombing is the central case study around which this book is organised, the practice must be understood within its broader context and historical influences. Yarn bombing is just one example of a growing movement that has taken hold in recent years that brings together handicrafts, such as knitting, quilting, and embroidery with efforts to effect change, socially and politically. Commonly referred to as craftivism—a portmanteau of the words craft and activism—crafter Betsy Greer (2007: 401) describes the practice as one of ‘engaged creativity, especially regarding political or social causes’. Melbourne artist, craftivist, and community development worker, Tal Fitzpatrick (2018: 3), more recently has expanded on this definition, describing craftivism as: …both a strategy for non-violent activism and a mode of DIY citizenship that looks to influence positive social and political change. This uniquely 21st Century practice involves the combination of craft techniques with elements of social and/or digital engagement as part of a proactive effort to bring attention to, or pragmatically address, issues of social, political and environmental justice.

While the term craftivism may have only gained currency in the early 2000s, it is important to recognise that it is not a new phenomenon. Craftivist ideals have been practiced for centuries, particularly by women and marginalised people who, throughout history, have used art and craft to protest against, take a stand, or comment on social, environmental, and political issues, among others. While these acts may not have necessarily operated in the overt and colourful manner that we see yarn bombing take, they have nevertheless been important exemplars of the power of craft to, for example, ensure the preservation of traditional cultures in response to, among other things, colonialism (see Fishwick and McGovern 2019). The practice of yarn bombing is an important, yet sometimes uneasy, player in the modern-day resurgence of craftivism. Using yarn bombing, a transgressive urban craft practice, as a case study, this book brings a criminological lens to the contemporary

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craftivist movement, paying particular attention to the gendered dimensions of these activities, as well as the ways in which craft is being used to address social, political, environmental, economic, and other concerns that characterise contemporary society.

Chapter Overview In this chapter I have provided the context for this research, outlining the questions that led to my examination of yarn bombing and the methodological approaches in exploring this phenomenon. I have also outlined why I have positioned yarn bombing within the broader field of craftivism. In Chapter 2 of the book I describe the modern craftivist movement in more detail, and examine the practice within its broader, historical traditions. Drawing on historic and contemporary examples, the chapter documents different examples of craftivism, from war craftivism through to acts of craftivism that centre on issues of social justice and gendered violence. As the recent revival of craftivism must be understood as part of a longer history of the intersection of craft and activism these examples, organised thematically, demonstrate both the continuity of craft as a protest weapon, as well as the range of issues that have been the focus of these protests across history. I summarise this overview of craftivist practices by proposing a framework I call the logics of craftivism, a Venn diagram that maps out the intersecting and interconnected personal, community, and political logics that underlie craftivist actions. The diagram also serves as a point of reference for the later analysis of yarn bombing practices, and the factors that motivate yarn bombers and frame their engagement in the act. Chapters 3 and 4 present the empirical data collected as part of my exploratory study of yarn bombing. Chapter 3 begins by outlining yarn bombings and its origins, touching on some of the criticisms and controversies of the practice that have been raised by scholars. Following this, the chapter considers the various motivations underlying individual’s decisions to yarn bomb. From fun, pleasure and excitement, through to reclaiming public space, raising awareness, and championing for change, the chapter documents the various personal, community, and political motivators that are behind yarn bombers’ practices. In presenting these motivations, the chapter also analyses how these motivations might be understood from a range of criminological and other perspectives. The conclusion of the chapter goes on to draw comparisons between yarn

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bombers’ motivations for yarn bombing and the logics of craftivism proposed in Chapter 2. Chapter 4, the second of the analysis chapters, again draws on data from research interviews to explore how the practice of yarn bombing is framed by yarn bombers themselves and in public discourse. Beginning with a discussion of the legal frames through which yarn bombing can be understood, the chapter considers questions of legality, risk, and art to gain a better understanding of how yarn bombing is constructed as a practice. It pays particular attention to the ways in which yarn bombers articulate yarn bombing as a deviant, subversive act, and critically examines the street art versus graffiti divide. In particular, the chapter reflects on the ‘exceptional status’ granted to yarn bombers (Hahner and Varda 2014: 302), as well as the ‘aesthetic authority’ (Ferrell 1993) that determines how and why yarn bombing is rendered harmless in the eyes of law enforcement and public alike. As the chapter concludes, it reflects on the divergent narratives that have been built around the practice that may be considered to perform deviancy in theory, but arguably not in practice. In the final chapter, Chapter 5, the various elements of the study are bought together to consider what this study contributes to criminological conversations about crime and deviancy. It also reflects on the ways in which criminologists might further explore creative forms of resistance and protest in their work. While the foundations of this study may have originated in my own personal interests in craft, it is clear that this phenomenon has much to offer when it comes to reflecting on what counts as crime and deviancy in society, and nonviolent, creative forms of protest, resistance, and activism.

References City of Melbourne. (2013). Yarn Bombing: Stitching Up City Square. What’s on Blog. Available at: https://whatsonblog.melbourne.vic.gov.au/yarn-bombingstitching-up-city-square/. Close, S. (2018). Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race. International Journal of Communication, 12, 867–889. Cresswell, T. (1992). In Place-Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press. Cresswell, T. (1994). Putting Women in Their Place: The Carnival at Greenham Common. Antipode, 26(1), 35–58.

10  A. McGOVERN De Certeau, M. (1984/1998). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California. Ferrell, J. (1993). Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Fishwick, E., & McGovern, A. (2019). Crafting, Crime, Harm and Justice in Australia. In: H. Mandell (Ed.), Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (pp. 263–277). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Fitzpatrick, T. (2018). Craftivism: A Manifesto/Methodology (2nd ed.). Available at: https://www.talfitzpatrick.com/craftivismmanifestomethodology. Greer, B. (2007). Craftivism. In G. Anderson & K. Herr (Eds.), Encyclopaedia of Activism and Social Justice. Thousand Oaks: Sage. Hahner, L., & Varda, S. (2014). Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(4), 301–321. Horn, A. (2014). Townsville Stitched Up in Christmas Cheer, with North Queensland City ‘Yarn Bombed’. ABC News. Available at: https://www.abc. net.au/news/2014-12-25/townsville-stitched-up-in-christmas-cheer-afteryarn-bombing/5987286. Kahne, J., Middaugh, E., & Allen, D. (2015). Youth, New Media, and the Rise of Participatory Politics. In D. Allen & J. Light (Eds.), From Voice to Influence: Understanding Citizenship in the Digital Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lyng, S. (1990). Edgework: A Social Psychological Analysis of Voluntary Risk Taking. American Journal of Sociology, 95(4), 851–886. Lyng, S. (2005). Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge. McNally, G. (2016). All Hail Queen Babs the Redfern Yarn Bomber. The Daily Telegraph. Available at: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/ nsw/all-hail-queen-babs-the-redfern-yarn-bomber/news-story/ad6a6651f 721769ca4fda19cfd669ab2. Porter, A. (2019). Aboriginal Sovereignty, ‘Crime’, and Criminology. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 31(1), 122–142. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge. Young, A. (2014). Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination. London: Routledge. Zwick, D. (2005). Where the Action Is: Internet Stock Trading as Edgework. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), 22–43.

CHAPTER 2

Unravelling the Threads: Contemporary Craftivism and Its Origins

Abstract  This chapter contextualises the practice of yarn bombing through a discussion of the broader craftivist movement within which it is situated. In a detailed thematic account of contemporary and significant examples of craftivism, the chapter establishes the long history of crafts as tools for activism and advocacy. Advancing the work of Greer (2008, 2014) and Pentney (2008), the chapter also proposes three logics of craftivist practice—personal, community, and political—to argue that craftivist acts, while driven by different motives and objectives, are inherently political, and should be understood as such. Keywords  Craftivism · Logics of craftivism Feminism · Knitting · Social justice

· Betsy Greer ·

In this chapter I explore the broader craftivist movement within which yarn bombing is situated. I consider this movement in both its contemporary and historic forms, demonstrating how craft has long been used as a medium for activism, and how this has manifest in more recent expressions of craftivism and advocacy. Drawing on both historic and recent examples from around the globe, the substantive content of this chapter is dedicated to identifying the long-standing foundations of craft-based activism across a range of separate, yet interconnected, thematic categories. Focusing predominantly, although not exclusively, on women’s craft work, these themes show not © The Author(s) 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1_2

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just the breadth of issues that craftivists are engaged with, but they also highlight the varying degrees to which craftivists are deploying craftivism to advocate for change. Whether wanting to simply start a conversation or draw attention to an issue, through to vigorously campaigning for a revolution, the chapter sets the scene for a discussion on the underlying logics of (chiefly) women’s craft work as activist work. Following these examples, the chapter goes on to explain the personal, community, and the political logics that characterise craftiv­ ist practices. These logics are depicted in the form of a Venn diagram, which reveals the overlapping components that bring together the personal, community, and political manifestations of craftivism (Greer 2014: 8). The articulation of these logics takes inspiration from the writings of Greer (2008, 2014) and Pentney (2008) to suggest that while groups and individuals may have different motivations and objectives when they engage with craft in these ways, they each can be understood as craftivist acts, and can thus never truly be apolitical. This discussion is a prelude to the analysis of the craftivist act of yarn bombing.

The Origins of Craftivism As noted in the previous chapter, the practice of yarn bombing is understood to belong within the contemporary craftivism movement, which has its origins in centuries of radical craft work. While historically the use of craft as a medium for activism may not have been deliberately conceived of as such, through a modern-day lens it is evident that these historical acts share a number of parallels with the current day practice of craftivism. The term craftivism itself is thought to have been first coined by the Church of Craft1 around the year 2000 (Arsenal Pulp Press 2014), however, it was not until 2003 that the term became widespread, popularised through the work and writings of crafter Betsy Greer, who uses the term to describe a revolutionary activist movement that uses art and craft as a weapon of protest. Greer has become something of a luminary for contemporary craftivism, coming to prominence as a blogger, public speaker, writer, and 1 The Church of Craft is a crafting community with chapters in the United States, Canada, and the UK and a website that provides advice and support for crafters. Greer has stated that she believes she came across the word ‘craftivism’ on The Church of Craft website (Arsenal Pulp Press 2014).

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social media doyen for the movement and, recently, editing an anthology on the movement that brings together contributions from a number of artists and crafters to map out various manifestations of craftivism, ‘from the personal to the political’ (Greer 2014: 8). As part of her co-authored Craftivism Manifesto, Greer states: Your craft is your voice. Craftivism is about raising consciousness, creating a better world stitch by stitch… Craftivism is about creating wider conversations about uncomfortable social issues. A craftivist is anyone who uses their craft to help the greater good or in resistance to a greater societal ill… Craftivism encourages people to challenge injustice and find creative solutions to conflict… (Baumstark et al., n.d.)

Greer’s work in this space has inspired others to pursue craftivist approaches to advocacy, including Sarah Corbett, founder of the Craftivist Collective. Corbett, a long-time activist, was drawn to craftivism because it allowed her to continue her activist work without contributing to the burn-out that she was feeling as a result of her engagement in more traditional forms of activism (Corbett 2013, 2017: 3; Brewer 2017). Corbett’s stated tendency towards introversion, combined with her discovery of the technique of cross-stitch, saw her embracing the ‘gentle protest’ approach to activism that craftivism inspires, acting as somewhat of a counterbalance to more ‘angry’ or ‘aggressive’ forms of activism that Corbett was more familiar with (Corbett 2017: 21–25). For Corbett, gentle protest allows individuals and groups to ‘effectively protest against harmful structures, attract people to protest, and reflect on the way we want our world to be, challenging injustice and harm through values of love, kindness and humility’ (2017: 31). In establishing the Craftivist Collective in 2008, Corbett’s aim was to bring together people interested in using crafted goods to generate positive change in the world (Craftivist Collective, n.d.; Corbett and Housley 2011). The Collective’s manifesto, among other things, encourages craftivists to take ‘a thoughtful approach to mindful activism’ and ‘[u]se the slow, stitchby-stitch, nature of craft to help you consider the complexities of injustices’ (Craftivist Collective, n.d.). While the modern-day iterations of craftivism, no doubt advanced by the internet age, have in many respects grown into global, coordinated phenomena, replete with clever campaigns and carefully crafted manifestos, using arts and crafts as a means for social activism and protest

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has been taking place for many centuries, in both subtle and overt ways, on small and large scales. Whether demanding action on political issues, making a statement about war, drawing attention to environmental harms, highlighting injustices, or preserving traditions in the face of colonial rule, craftivism has a history long before its contemporary incarnations. While the term craftivism is a combination of the words craft and activism, it often evokes debate about the degree to which craft is political, and how politically engaged individuals or groups need to be in their craftivism. For example, in 2009 members of craft website Etsy’s ‘Craftivist Team’ clashed over the definition of craftivism, with members from both ends of the political spectrum voicing dissatisfaction with how their counterparts were pursuing their own political agendas within the Team (Finn 2009). This debate led to a number of people leaving the group and sparked a larger conversation in the crafting community about the politics of craftivism. Similar debates were reignited in 2019 with the decision by knitting website Ravelry to ban any pro-Trump content on their site as a resolution against white supremacy (Mervosh 2019). While the debate over whether and to what degree craft is political continues, as will be discussed at various point throughout this book, Betsy Greer (2008: 101) herself, drawing on a famous feminist catchcry (e.g. Hanisch 1970), has argued that ‘the personal is political and that every choice and action we make affects not only ourselves and our lives, but the lives of others as well’. Though some are sceptical about the connection between craft and activism, Carpenter (2010) argues that each generation has produced its own ‘radical crafters’ who have engaged in projects involving ‘collective production’ and ‘experiential and durational performance’ to focus public discourse on an issue. This is also the perspective of Casey Jenkins and Rayna Fahey of Craft Cartel (discussed below), who have stated: ‘Militant craft activism was rife throughout the last century… Conventional history may claim that the craft of the past has been benign and sugar-sweet, but this is not reality’ (cited in Greer 2014: 119–120). The long history of the use of craft as an activist tool can similarly be connected with feminist traditions. As sociologist Trent S. Newmeyer (2008: 442–443) has argued, ‘women have long used crafts as protests against larger social injustice in the world’. According to Pace (2007: iii), ‘the latest revival of knitting, which began around the year 2000, is part of a history of hand-crafts revivals occurring over the last 150

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years… [and] has its roots in the social movements that began in the 1960s (feminism, ecology, civil rights, and anti-war)’. For Parker (2010: 97–100), however, women as far back as the sixteenth century exhibited practices in their craft that could be considered subversive, challenging the status quo and pushing back against social norms. For example, it was not uncommon for women’s embroideries to feature interpretations of biblical stories and figures that depicted women as heroic, courageous and powerful, engaging in acts of violence, and acting contra to the ‘feminine’, ‘delicate’ act that embroidery itself was meant to embody and foster within women (Parker 2010). From the use of embroidery in seventeenth-century England to stitch images of powerful women, to the more recent creation of the Pussyhat as a symbol of women’s political dissatisfaction, craft has played an important role in feminist advocacy throughout history (Fishwick and McGovern 2019). While a whole tradition exists around male-dominated crafts and trades that have personal, community, and political ideologies that may be considered craftivist in nature—and indeed, some of the people interviewed as part of this research were men—this book and the examples within it are centrally concerned with women’s experiences of craft activism and, consequently, the role and place of feminism within debates over the utility of craft as a weapon of protest. As will be clear in many of the examples that are discussed in this, and subsequent, chapters, gender concerns and feminist principles are often (although not exclusively) central to the philosophies and approaches guiding acts of craftivism. From war to colonisation, capitalism to gender, and health and the environment, the following sections document the depth and breadth of issues where craft has been central to overt and covert forms of activism and protest. While for reasons of clarity the examples discussed below are situated within discrete categories, it should be noted that in many instances, these examples intersect and overlap with issues and agendas highlighted in other thematic categories. Despite this, what they do demonstrate, however, is the many and varied ways in which crafts have been central to historical and contemporary activist and feminist actions. War Craftivism One of the most enduring exemplars of the connection between craft and activism have come during times of war. There are abundant examples of the way that craft has been used to respond to war or the threat of

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war. During the early to mid-1800s and the first-wave of feminism, for example, American poet, author, and social activist Julia Ward Howe’s anti-war and abolitionist sentiments inspired women to engage in public debate, with some organising ‘knit for peace’ circles, while others ‘knitted to support their men in combat’ during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s (Rall and Costello 2010: 80). Similarly, during the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), while some women heeded the ­government’s call to help clothe their army, others ‘used their knitting to forward the war effort in more subversive ways’ (Christiansen 2006: 13). For example, Philadelphia knitter ‘Old Mom Rinker’ reportedly sent General George Washington secrets from the British military, concealed in balls of yarn that she would ‘drop from a high, adjacent mound to the passing troops’, who would then deliver the yarn to Washington (Hermanson 2012; Christiansen 2006: 13; Broyles 2013: 471–472). Though their subversiveness is debated—with some arguing that their acts were simply an outcome of propagandist messaging—the emergence of women’s ‘spinning meetings’ in the aftermath of the boycotting of British goods following the 1765 Stamp Act, were also seen to be an act of defiance, ‘where women would compete to spin, weave, and knit the most fiber goods’ as a demonstration of their patriotism (Hermanson 2012: 1–2; Farinosi and Fortunati 2018). Christiansen (2006: 13) states that during this period, American colonists employed traditionally ‘domestic roles of the “weaker sex”’ to spin, weave, knit and sew their own clothes as a way of asserting their independence. Taking a somewhat different approach in their defiance, civil rights activists during the American Civil War (1861–1865) purportedly taught those living in refugee camps the skills of sewing, knitting, and cooking so that they may achieve financial independence once free from these camps (Hermanson 2012: 4). While these earlier forms of craftivism were often less explicit in expressing their defiance, some of the more recent ‘wartime’ knitting efforts have been much more open about their subversive or political ends, although not all have expressed their work as being politically driven. Knitter Nina Rosenberg for example, motivated by the Iraq war, created the Red Sweater Deployment Project, a collaborative knitting venture aimed at highlighting the American death toll resulting from the 2003 Iraq war (Christiansen 2006: 23; Brown and Brown 2011: n.p.). Inviting contributions from knitters around the world, the project produced thousands of Barbie doll-sized red sweaters—red symbolising blood, and the sweater symbolising the human form—to signify

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every American death in the war, which Rosenberg went on to display on a tree in front of her home. While stressing that the project was not intended to protest the war—rather, to raise awareness and prompt discussion about it—Rosenberg found that many of those who contributed to the project were politically motivated in their reasons for participating (Brown and Brown 2011: n.p.). Concerns over the Iraq War were also behind the Knit Not War 1,0o0 project of Seann McKeel, who in 2007 embarked on a mission to knit 1000 origami cranes, with the help of the public, as a project of peace (Nargi 2011: 151–152; Brown and Brown 2011). Similarly inspired, artist Sabrina Gschwandtner’s Wartime Knitting Circle installation in New York in 2007 invited visitors to the Museum of Art and Design to sit down and knit from a selection of ‘wartime’ knitting patterns, while simultaneously discussing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with any resulting creations sent to Afghanistan (Brown and Brown 2011; Witkowski 2015; Hermanson 2012: 7), and textile artist Lisa Anne Auerbach created garment patterns for knitters with ‘leftist political message[s]’, including the ‘Body Count Mittens’ design, which featured the Iraq War death toll count within the detail of the pattern (Hermanson 2012: 17). Taking an openly political stance, Danish artist Marianne Jorgensen in 2006 protested the involvement of Denmark in the Iraq War by yarn bombing an army tank. Using over 4000 pink knitted and crocheted squares sent by contributors from around the globe, Jorgensen wanted to demonstrate the common acknowledgement of a resistance to the war in Iraq. She was quoted at the time as saying that: Unsimilar (sic) to a war, knitting signals home, care, closeness and time for reflection. Ever since Denmark became involved in the war in Iraq I have made different variations of pink tanks and I intend to keep doing that, until the war ends. For me, the tank is a symbol of stepping over other peoples borders. When it is covered in pink it becomes completely unarmed, and it loses its authority. Pink becomes a contrast in both material and colour when combined with the tank. (cited in Pentney 2008: 5)

Jorgensen’s tank has become one of the most well-recognised public craft displays of resistance to the Iraq War. Anti-war sentiments were also central to the actions of the women occupying Greenham Common, a Royal Air Force station, in England from in the early 1980s. Resulting from a conversation between a group

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of women in Wales in 1981 (Cresswell 1994: 36), the occupation of Greenham Common to protest the storage of nuclear weapons on the site was explicitly feminist in its philosophy, organisation, and practice, coming to be ‘associated with feminist political strategy’ (Cresswell 1994: 36). Decorating and patching the wire fences of the military base where they were camped with knitting, embroidered art, ribbons, and craft pieces (Fishwick and McGovern 2019; Fairhall 2006: 108), the women of Greenham Common physically obstructed the BritishAmerican Nuclear Weapons program (Carpenter 2010: 3) and acted as a counterpoint to what Robertson (2011: 185) describes as the ‘brutality of (masculine) police oppression and the wider politics that had brought the threat of nuclear war’. As Carpenter (2010: 3) writes, the women’s woven web blockades were a ‘direct form of activism which work[ed] at the point of power transaction. The action [sought] to prevent an exercise or an abuse of power by disrupting, interrupting or transforming it’. The women’s occupation of the land lasted some 19 years and came to be what Christie (cited in Fairhall 2006: vii) states as ‘the most dramatic and visible part of an international movement against nuclear weapons’ (Fig. 2.1). Anti-colonial and Anti-slavery Craftivism As some of the examples of war craftivism demonstrate, knitting, ­weaving, and other handcrafts have also been used as ways of asserting independence and resisting colonisation. For many, even the capacity to retain and pass on traditional craft practices in and of themselves are a mode of resistance, as well as a tool through which more explicit acts of defiance can be practiced. Mohandas Gandhi, for example, was a central figure in Indian protests against oppressive British colonial practices in the 1920s and 1930s. As leader of the Indian National Congress, Gandhi was an icon for non-violent civil disobedience (Brown and Fee 2008: 39). By urging his followers to craft hand spun, handwoven cloth (khadi) on a spinning wheel (charkha)—an act of defiance against ‘the exploitive and controlling economic and political system’ of textile manufacturing that came with British colonial rule (Brown and Fee 2008: 39)—Gandhi became a symbol of self-reliance and indigenous products (Carpenter 2010; Singhal and Greiner 2008; Rall and Costello 2010). By creating

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Fig. 2.1  Quilted banner flown at Greenham Common on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

hand spun and handwoven clothing, and encouraging others to do the same, Gandhi’s emblematic protest drew attention to the consequences of the cloth manufacturing industry being moved from India, where it had been the country’s principal industry, to locations in England, resulting in mass unemployment, poverty, and the ‘ruralisation of India as former textile workers were forced to move back to villages’ (Singhal and Greiner 2008: 45). Craft and clothing also became a way for those living under conditions of slavery to exercise resistance. According to Knowles (2019: 65), ‘enslaved people used dress to resist their conditions in nonviolent ways on a daily basis’, with the purchase of clothing and other goods demonstrating their capacity to be part of the capitalist consumer market, not simply products of it. Arts and crafts have similarly served as practices of cultural resistance and survival for First Nations’ people in response to colonialism

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(Enoch 2000; Tunstall 2015). In Australia, for example, the process of colonisation was accompanied by attempts to destroy Indigenous culture and identity through the prohibition of speaking First People’s language, dance, art, craft, ceremony, and law, as well as forced assimilation into the colonisers’ culture (Fishwick and McGovern 2019; Cunneen 2017). As Australian playwright, artistic director, and Noonuccal Nuugi man Wesley Enoch (2000: 349) explained: Before 1788 our peoples had to think survival. Art and culture were inseparable: hunting, family structures, genealogy, Law, geography were reflected in the art, and so they are today. Though the world has changed and the role of our performance may have as much to do with political survival, social awareness, and the need for systematic change, the power and the role of the artists is to think survival.

Until the late 1960s First Peoples in Australia only qualified for the benefits enjoyed by white Australians if they showed they were ‘civilised’; that is, they took on the cultural styles and ways of living of the colonisers, living in ‘civilised spaces’ and conformed to the order and modernity of the colonial subject (Cunneen 2010: 132; Fishwick and McGovern 2019). The survival of art and craft has been integral to the continuing expression of law, culture, and solidarity in the face of colonial violence and injustices and, in this sense, they are an organic feature of community survival (Cunneen 2010; Langton 1994; Fishwick and McGovern 2019; Martin-Chew 2019). As such, art and crafts contribute to the reinforcement of traditional moral and ethical principles, social customs, kinship, and ties to the country and land (Cunneen 2010; Tunstall 2015). Art and crafts also provide an alternative documentary history of cultural survival, offering ‘a material dimension to oral history and oral testimony’ (Cunneen 2010: 123). Yorta Yorta woman and artist Dr. Treahna Hamm, for example, has used weavings to represent ‘her journey to recover her ancestors and heritage as a member of the Stolen Generations’ (Tunstall 2015) and Wiradjuri woman Karla Dickens (n.d.) integrates art and craft work in her commentary on colonial legacy and contemporary politics. Similar examples can be seen in the practices of other First Nations peoples. For example, according to John Borrows (2001: 18 cited in Cunneen 2010: 135), Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law at the University of Victoria Law School:

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[Indigenous] people have… used pyctographs, wampum belts, masks, totem poles, button blankets, culturally modified environments, birch bark scrolls, burial disturbances, songs, ceremonies and stories, to name but a few, to remember and interpret what happened in the past.

Traditional crafts have also been employed as part of the communications strategies by First Peoples in the fight for recognition, often accompanying written submissions to government on key issues of concern for these communities. As Martin-Chew (2019) argues, ‘[f]or Aboriginal artists… their lives and ancestry are crucial to an understanding of the work they make and its often passionately political delivery’. In Australia, for example, the Yirkkala bark petitions of 1963 were presented by the Yolngu people to the Australian government as part of a campaign to stop mining exploration and the destruction of traditional lands (Langton 1994; Fishwick and McGovern 2019). These bark petitions included paintings of clan designs depicting the lands that would be destroyed by the proposed mine and were written in both Yolngu Matha and English language (Cunneen 2010; Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies 2013). According to Gallois (2016b: 24), ‘[t]he bark petition represents a powerful activist-art precedent in which Indigenous art was used to advance a political objective’. More recently, the 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart—which argues for ‘the establishment of a First Nations Voice enshrined in the Constitution’ (1 Voice Uluru 2017)—was presented to the Australian Federal Government accompanied by a painted canvas depicting the statement, the signatures of over 250 delegates who generated the Statement, and ‘creation stories of the Anangu people, who are the traditional owners of Uluru’ (Fishwick and McGovern 2019; Chrysanthos 2019). The use of traditional arts and crafts in these ways can also be seen in the history of one of the most iconic symbols of Indigenous Australians: the Aboriginal flag. Created in 1971 by Luritja man and artist Harold Thomas, the Australian Aboriginal flag—a symbol of Indigenous Australians’ connection to land, culture, and identity—has been recognised as an example of Indigenous activist art. Flown initially in the 1970s as an ‘unknown flag at the start of a civil rights march celebrating National Aborigines Day’ (Croft 2012), the flag came to symbolise the assertion of Indigenous rights in the face of colonisation. As Gallois (2016a: 47–48 emphasis in original) writes:

22  A. McGOVERN The Aboriginal flag affirms black pride, it claims and asserts Aboriginal land rights, it advocates Indigenous self determination, it repudiates the insidious policies and culture of assimilation, and it has come to symbolise the complex notion and claim of Indigenous sovereignty… As a non– nation-claiming flag, the Aboriginal flag is best understood as a flag of identity, political activist agendas and ideals.

The flag was waved at protest marches in the 1980s and in the 1990s by Commonwealth and Olympic champion, Cathy Freeman, as she celebrated wins on the athletics track (Croft 2012; Gallois 2016b), however, it was not until 1995 that the flag was recognised by the Australian Government as an official ‘Flag of Australia’ under the Flags Act 1953 (Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Studies 2013; Gallois 2016b).2 As Croft (2012) has argued, ‘[o]ne of the very few, if only, avenues available to Indigenous people by which to make their/our concerns known is arts and cultural activism, since many of our political platforms have been shut down, dismantles, devolved, erased’. For Gallois (2016b: 31), the Aboriginal flag is representative of Indigenous activism and ‘an exemplary work of activist art’. Economic and Anti-capitalist Craftivism Individuals and groups have also engaged with craftivist practices to protest economic issues and capitalism more generally. One of the most well-known anti-capitalist activist groups is the Revolutionary Knitting Circle (RKC), from Calgary, Canada. Founded in 2000, the group uses crafts such as knitting, quilting, and other handcrafts as a medium for the creation of ‘a globalization of justice’ and ‘constructive revolution’ (Revolutionary Knitting Circle 2017). According to Hermanson (2012: 6), RKC promotes ‘local sustainability to achieve independence from questionable corporate or disadvantageous government trade agreements’, inspired by the work of women knitters during the War for Independence (Revolutionary Knitting Circle 2017). The first major craftivist act of the RKC was their global knit-in at the Group of Eight (G8) Economic Summit, hosted in Calgary in June 2002, where their goal was ‘to challenge the G8 and the global corporatism it stands for…’ (Pentney 2008 5; Christiansen 2006: 20). 2 According to Gallois (2016b: 24), [t]his decision was made at the recommendation of The Australian Council for Reconciliation, but against the wishes of Harold Thomas and many other Indigenous leaders’.

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With an inclusive and organic approach to group membership, the RKC’s manifesto calls upon communities to take charge of their futures and be liberated from ‘the shackles of global capitalism’ (Revolutionary Knitting Circle 2017). As Pentney (2008: 5) notes, the group ‘represent the rejection of economic progress in the form of corporate wealth that they believe occurs at the expense of local producers and citizens’. Their peaceful and non-confrontational knit-ins during the Summit sat in stark contrast to more traditional forms of demonstration typically seen at such events. As Portwood Stacer (2007: 17) notes, ‘their form of protest is highly visible while utterly non-threatening’, which garnered a significant amount of media attention at the time. Another group taking on capitalism through craft is the organisation microRevolt, founded by craftivist Cat Mazza in 2003. With a stated mission to ‘investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor’ (microRevolt 2019), microRevolt have embarked on a number of projects aimed at helping knitters create their own garments (and therefore avoid sweatshop labour), as well as spread an anti-consumerist message that undermines corporate branding (Rall and Costello 2010; microRevolt 2019). One of the largest projects the group embarked on was the NIKE Blanket Petition, undertaken between 2003 and 2008. With contributions from knitters and crocheters in over 30 countries, the NIKE Blanket—depicting the NIKE swoosh symbol—measured 15 feet in width, with each of the 4 × 4 inch knitted/crocheted squares contributed to the logo ‘acting as a signature for fair labor policies for Nike garment workers’ (microRevolt 2019). The completed project went on to tour locations such as France, Australia, and the United States, and was also accompanied by a virtual component, which allowed visitors to the Blanket’s website to click on each square of the blanket and see the name and location of its creator, further ‘reminding viewers to think about the workplace conditions that produce luxury and sports goods’ (Rall and Costello 2010: 94) (Fig. 2.2). The plight of garment workers has also been taken up by the Craftivist Collective, who have led three campaigns specifically targeting the fashion industry and their treatment of workers. Their ‘Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops’ mini protest banner campaign served to highlight the unethical conditions facing many fashion industry workers around the globe. Conducted during London Fashion Week 2012, the campaign invited crafters to stitch up a mini protest banner embroidered with

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Fig. 2.2  NIKE Blanket Petition on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

statements about the fashion industry—such as ‘Lowest paid models at London Fashion Week paid £125 an hour. Majority of garment workers in Vietnam paid £25 a month’ (McBride 2012)—which would then be displayed in public spaces as ‘a non-threatening method of drawing attention to the issue and provoking people to think about how they can make a difference’ (McBride 2012). Craftivist Collective’s ‘Marks & Spencer Living Wage’ stitch in campaign in 2015 similarly targeted the wages and treatment of those creating garments for the retailer, encouraging them to pay these employees a living wage. For this campaign Craftivist Collective distributed 250 special handkerchief craft kits with a Living Wage message printed on them to Marks & Spencer shareholders, encouraging them to support the Living Wage (Corbett 2017, 2019). The kits included an ethically made hanky, needle and thread, project instructions, and a briefing note on investment risk. They also gifted 14 embroidered handkerchiefs—created

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by craftivists specifically matched to their recipient—to Marks & Spencer Board Members before the company’s Annual General Meeting, which were embroidered with personally crafted messages promoting support for the Living Wage (Corbett 2019). In May 2016, Marks & Spencer announced plans to pay their employees above the Living Wage (Corbett 2019). Continuing their craftivist work in the fashion industry, in 2019 Craftivist Collective launched their ‘Mini Fashion Statements’ craftivism kit, aimed at encouraging people to reflect on who makes their clothes and the true cost of fashion, both monetarily and ethically. The kits included 10 scrolls upon which craftivists could write a message about achieving a more sustainable fashion industry. Completed scrolls were then secreted into the pockets of clothes in retail stores or in other locations where the recipients (typically those who purchase the clothes) could read and reflect on the message (Craftivist Collective, n.d.). The kit was developed to align with the global Fashion Revolution campaign which, each April, invites shoppers to ‘take to social media and turn their clothes inside out, posting photos of garment labels to demand an answer to the question, “Who made my clothes?”’ (Goldsworthy 2019). As part of their broader suite of activities and resources, the Fashion Revolution (n.d.) organisation further articulates their goals and the key issues they propose to address, which include reflecting on: …how we interact with craft in the age of the Anthropocene – from the effects of globalisation, to the plight of the homeworker; the crafts that are on the brink of extinction, and the ones that are alive, kicking, and actively embracing new technologies to ensure the hand-made and the artisanal remain relevant for the future.

Like Craftivist Collective, Fashion Revolution is concerned with both the social and environmental impacts of the global fashion industry. Craftivism also played a part in the anti-capitalist Occupy movement—which surfaced initially in 2011 at the Occupy Wall Street site in Zuccotti Park, New York, but soon spread to other locations across the world—directly at the site of Occupy protests, as well as remotely, through the creation of crafted items in association with the ideologies of the movement.

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Utilising the concept of the ‘99%’ ‘to refer to widening income disparities between rich and poor’, the objective of the Occupy movement was to represent the interests of those belonging to the 99% in seeking to challenge capitalistic structures and economic inequality (Fletcher 2014: 83). Assembling in public spaces and essentially ‘occupying’ the space as a way to protest corporate greed and reform, the Occupy movement was visually characterised by, among other things, handwritten cardboard protest signs that contained slogans such as ‘We are the 99%’. In addition to tales of knitters and crocheters at protest sites teaching people how to knit and crochet and creating beanies and gloves to protect fellow protestors against the cold (Buzsek 2011; New Domesticity 2011; Davis and Ghazali 2011), there were a number of groups and individuals who engaged with the protest movement outside the boundaries of these occupied zones. For example, during a period in the New York protest where protesters were physically restricted from demonstration sites, protestAR—an augmented reality project led by artist Mark Skwarek— invited protesters to submit photos of themselves together with their placards for inclusion in a virtual protest in front of the New York Stock Exchange, which could be viewed via a specially created app (Sargeant 2017: 3). The Wellington Craftivism Collective—a group of crafters dedicated to, among other things, anti-consumerism and anti-capitalism—invited people from around the world to contribute to their Occupy Blanket, a series of handmade patchwork blankets created to show support and solidarity with those in the Occupy movement, which were subsequently put on display in locations around the world (Wellington Craftivism Collective, n.d.). As one of the members of the Collective stated at the time: ‘The thing that I love the most about the idea of conveying strong political messages via the means of craft that it is so noninvasive and unthreatening’ (Holahan cited in Counter Craft 2011). The use of craft to challenge capitalism and economic concerns also extends into the realm of consumer culture. The first Do-It-Yourself (DIY) movement of the 1970s’ UK, for instance, emerged out of a punk counterculture that saw young people from working-class backgrounds in particular embrace ‘the opportunity to make a simple garment, inexpensively, regardless of skill level’ (Turney 2009: 94). Taking up crafts such as knitting allowed youths to not only challenge the status quo when it came to fashion and consumer goods, but it also allowed them to repurpose, refashion, and customise their punk aesthetic in

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ways that functioned outside of the mainstream fashion system (Turney 2009: 94–97). This DIY movement resurfaced again in the 1990s, seeking to address concerns such as sexism, sexual violence, and body image through the reclamation and re-politicisation of traditional femininity in new and creative ways, including the creation of zines, music, and crafts (Pentney 2008; Fields 2014). As Schuster (2014: 54–55) argues, however, this era was characterised by ‘everyday’ approaches to activism, where resistance manifest in many small, private actions aimed at creating a better life, rather than large, organised public movements. Environmental and Eco-craftivism While the DIY ethos of the 70s was embedded in sociocultural subversion (Turney 2009: 94) and its 1990s revival driven by the Riot Grrrl feminist punk movement of the United States (Greer 2008; Rall and Costello 2010), the DIY movement of the 2000s has arguably been motivated in part by growing concerns about the impacts of humans on the environment. On one level, eco-craftivists are concerned with making ethical choices when it comes to their lives, for example through recycling or repairing goods to reduce landfill, one of the philosophies behind the visible mending movement, which encourages people to repair damaged clothing rather than discard it (Visible Mending 2019). On another level, environment and eco-craftivists use crafted objects to draw attention to specific environmental concerns. The Stump Cozy Project in Oregon, US, for example, saw artists covering tree stumps with knitted cozies at logging sites to highlight the destructiveness of deforestation (Brown and Brown 2011) and the Crochet Coral Reef project by Australian sisters Christine and Margaret Wertheim sought to draw attention to the destruction of coral reefs as a result of global warming (Crochet Coral Reef, n.d.). Central to this project was the use of recycled materials in the crocheting of the coral, with ‘string, wire, ribbons, netting, [and] even plastic bags and telephone cords in the final project’ (Rall and Costello 2010: 92) (Figs. 2.3 and 2.4). The 2006 Knit a River project—a joint initiative between Wateraid and a London-based knitting group—was established to draw attention to the basic human right of clean drinking water in a way a traditional paper-based petition would be unlikely to achieve (Greer 2008: 109; Knit a River 2006). Inviting people to donate blue knitted squares to the project, the group stitched together a knitted blue river, ‘visually

28  A. McGOVERN

Fig. 2.3  Example from the Crochet Coral Reef project on exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design 2016, New York, United States (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

show[ing] both how large the problem [of access to clean drinking water] was globally and how many people supported the campaign’ (Greer 2008: 109). More recently, the Knitting Nannas Against Gas—or KNAG—established in 2012 in northern NSW, Australia coalesced around mutual political concerns regarding the exploration and mining of Coal Seam

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Fig. 2.4  Example from the Crochet Coral Reef project on exhibit at the Museum of Arts and Design 2016, New York, United States (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

Gas on agricultural lands. Regularly staging sit-ins out front of the offices of members of parliament, as well as on coal seam mining exploration sites, the group draws upon the historical use of knitting as a ‘tool for non-violent political action’ to strive for their cause (Knitting Nannas Against Gas 2016). Using black and yellow yarns, the group knit both functional and decorative items that represent the ‘Lock the Gate’ triangles displayed by farmers on their fences to signal their disagreement with the mining practice. For the KNAGs—a group comprising primarily of older women— knitting is ‘a means of taking purposeful action towards social and political change by tenaciously bearing witness to mining activities’ (Stops 2014: 11). By creating what the group calls ‘soft barriers’— yarn ‘symbolically secured’ to gates or roads at the entry of exploration

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sites—much like Jorgensen’s knitted tank detailed earlier, the group aims to disempower the diggers and machinery seeking to mine the sites (Stops 2014: 15–16). The KNAGs are guided by their ‘nannafesto’ which, in part, states: We peacefully [and] productively protest against the destruction of our land, air, and water by corporations and/or individuals who seek profit and personal gain from the short-sighted and greedy plunder of our natural resources. We support energy generation from renewable sources, and sustainable use of our other natural resources. We sit, knit, plot, have a yarn and a cuppa and bear witness to those who try to rape our land and divide our communities. (Knitting Nannas Against Gas 2016)

According to one member of the group, the name Knitting Nannas Against Gas itself was purposely conceived so as to create a sense of nostalgia, whereby peoples’ sense of the past creates a sentimentality that enables them to recognise the erosion of their rights over time (Stops 2014: 10). The group has arguably seen some success come from their acts of craftivism, with mining company Metgasco withdrawing from the Northern Rivers district of NSW, Australia in 2013 in recognition of the community’s opposition to Coal Seam Gas (Phillips 2013; McKinnon 2014). Now an international network, the Knitting Nannas’ counterparts in the UK include groups such as the Frack Free Creators (n.d.) and the Nanashire (n.d.), who are also engaged in anti-fracking campaigning via the medium of knitting. Environmental concerns have similarly been the focus of the Tempestry Project, which blends the fibre crafts of knitting and crochet with temperature data to present climate change in visual form; ‘tempestry’ being a hybrid of the words ‘temperature’ and ‘tapestry’ (Tempestry Project 2019). Founded in the United States in 2017, the Tempestry Project was established as a direct response to the Trump administration’s refusal to take action over climate change concerns (Nandi 2019). Creating a craftivist outlet for those similarly alarmed by climate change, the creators of the Tempestry Project assemble kits for knitters and crocheters that provide them with a series of coloured wools, with each colour assigned to a specific temperature range. Over the course of 365 days, the crafters knit or crochet a row of stitches per day, using the colour wool that corresponds with that day’s temperature in the city of their choice (The Tempestry Project 2019).

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By the end of the year, the crafter will have created a length of knitted or crocheted yarn that visually illustrates the temperature variations of their chosen location of a twelve-month period. If completed year on year, the crafter will be able to evidence the shifting temperature patterns over time, highlighting the effects of climate change in that area. As the creators of the project state, ‘a collection of Tempestries showing different years for a single location creates a powerful visual representation of changing temperatures over time’ (The Tempestry Project 2019). Health Craftivism Craft has also become a mechanism for raising awareness about or advocating for change on a range of health matters. Indeed, some working in the medical field have even argued that craftivism may be one way in which medical professionals can enhance their voice and promote their profession (see Youngson 2019). Arguably the most well-known craftivist expression related to health is the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, which was initiated in 1985 at the height of the AIDS crisis and in a medical and political climate which effectively stood silent while the numbers of people affected by AIDS continued to grow (Ings 2016). The AIDS Memorial Quilt was conceptualised by American Cleve Jones, who was frustrated over the lack of visibility those who had died or were suffering from AIDS were receiving. As Ings (2016: 57) relates, during a march in San Francisco commemorating the life of American politician Harvey Milk, Jones and a small group of friends wrote the names of people they knew had died of AIDS on small cards, which they then taped onto the side of the federal building (see also Rall and Costello 2010). Upon seeing the cards displayed in this way, Jones was reminded of the patches of a quilt: ‘I thought, what a perfect symbol; what a warm, comforting, middle-class, middle-American, traditional-family-values symbol to attach to this disease’ (Jones cited in Ings 2016: 57). This image led Jones to embark on a quilt-making project, inviting the friends and families of those affected by AIDS to contribute patchwork panels memorialising and documenting the lives of those lost to the illness, aiding not only in the grieving process, but also in activating political support and funding for AIDS (Ings 2016; Chansky 2010; Fitzpatrick and Reilly 2019). From a 40-quilt display at the San Francisco Town Hall during the Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade in June

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1985, the AIDS Memorial Quilt project quickly went global, with contributions submitted from all over the world, and multiple quilts generated from the piecing together of these patches (Ings 2016). By 2012 over 48,000 individual memorial panels had been created (Ings 2016: 58), with contributions continuing to be made to this day. The AIDS Memorial Quilt consequently stands as one of the most successful craftivists projects, with greater awareness, education, and government funding flowing towards the fight against AIDS as a result of the project and its role in increasing the visibility of AIDS (Rall and Costello 2010: 90). According to Ings (2016: 58), it has also inspired a number of other quilt-based projects that have similarly aimed to raise consciousness and funding around a range of health concerns, such as cancer and heart disease. Canadian fibre artist and educator, Beryl Tsang, also took a craftivist approach following a breast cancer diagnosis which resulted in the removal of one of her breasts (Tsang 2005). Struggling to find an affordable, comfortable, and suitable prosthetic breast to wear in an outfit for a party following her mastectomy, Tsang decided to knit one for herself. Tsang went on to share her design with others who had gone through mastectomies, making the pattern freely available online, as well as founding the company Tit Bits: Hand Knitted Breasts (Tit Bit 2005) as a way for women to access cheaper, more comfortable, and customisable prosthetic breasts (Pentney 2008: 4). According to Hanus (2008), as well as aiming to contribute to political discussion and education about breast cancer, Tsang hoped ‘that “the homemade prostheses will help women ‘take back the tit’ from cancer and a male-run health care system.”’ Social Justice Craftivism Social justice is one of the fastest emerging motivating factors for the development of craftivist projects are being developed, building on a long history of craft being used to advance social justice causes, as many of the aforementioned examples attest to. Engaging with a range of concerns from the missing and murdered, political violence, increased surveillance and legislation, mass incarceration, and race and gender discrimination, crafts such as embroidery, quilting, and knitting have become a mechanism through which campaigners can mobilise around social justice advocacy.

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Founded in Australia in 2007 and 2013 respectively, Craft Cartel and Knit Your Revolt are two craftivist collectives borne from the desire to peacefully ‘protest against conservative political parties, policies and politicians, and to reclaim public space for social justice or artistic purposes’ (Stevens 2016: 174). In 2013 and 2014, the Knit Your Revolt crew led a series of protests against the Queensland state government’s Criminal Law (Criminal Organisations Disruption) Amendment Bill 2013—colloquially referred to as the ‘anti-bikie law’ because of its focus on outlaw motorcycle gangs (Ryan and Santow 2013)—which proposed to make it a criminal offence for individuals to associate with members of certain organisations as identified by law enforcement. The Knit Your Revolt crew and others raised concerns on the Bill’s potential to impact on personal freedoms, arguging that law-abiding, non-gang motorcycle riders may be caught up in the application of the legislation by police, and opening the door to further association laws that in the future could include ‘members of environmental N[on] G[overnment] O[rganisations], trade unions, community groups and asylum seekers’ (Barns 2013; Lauches and Bartels 2013). In response to the Bill, the ‘Tricycle Gang’—a faction that emerged from the larger Knit Your Revolt collective—crafted gang patches, donned gang attire, and decorated their tricycles in ‘gang colours’ to protest the laws, which they argued would: …reverse the burden of proof in our law system from innocent until proven guilty to guilty by association until you prove your innocence, because people should be allowed to join a ridiculous tricycle gang of knitters and colour outside of the squares without having to fear being treated as though they are a serious threat to our community. (The Stitch 2013)

The ‘Gang’s’ protest actions—which included building a to-scale version of a solitary confinement cell, knitted out of pink yarn—garnered a significant amount of media attention, with a member of the ‘Gang’, Frankie Vandellous (2014) explaining their handiwork in an article for The Guardian: Knit Your Revolt decided to give a gift to our politicians, on the doorstep of parliament house: our signature solitary confinement cell, yarnbombed with pieces contributed from across Australia and North America.

34  A. McGOVERN We thought [then Queensland State Premier, Campbell] Newman needed a helpful reminder of what he had put into motion with his display of disdain for his constituents. He might meditate upon the economic impacts of imprisoning innocent citizens in isolation whilst removing men and women from the workforce and encumbering their families and support services. Newman might also reflect upon the mental and physical impacts that prolonged isolation would have on him, were his organisation deemed to be criminal in nature.

The Tricycle Gang’s protest resulted in the then Queensland Attorney General making a statement ‘to assure the public that innocent community organisations making “knitting or artwork or quilts” would not be targeted under the laws’ (McKinnon 2014; Bruinsma 2014), perhaps missing the broader point the group were trying to make. Again in 2013, and in the lead up to an Australian Federal Election campaign, Craft Cartel partnered with Melbourne group, The Crooked Stitchers, in an Australia-wide knitting-led protest tour targeting a range of political and social issues, from asylum seekers to misogyny (Stevens 2016: 174). As one of the organisers, Casey Jenkins (cited in Nardi 2013), was quoted as saying at the time: The medium of knitting is ideal for campaigning against misogyny, because knitting and craft are commonly associated with women, and by association, they’re often patronised as lesser art forms. People perceive it as being warm, cuddly, inoffensive and benign, and so it’s really quite a neat way to slip a political message in… We want to show how tough and determined knitters and women really are!

Creating a series of knitted banners, one in the shape of a large pair of swimming pants emblazoned with slogans directed at the then federal Liberal Party leader, Tony Abbott, including ‘Misogynist Knit-Wit – Not PM Material’ and ‘Budgie Smugglers – more threat to Australia than People Smugglers’, the group toured locations around the country to share their message and create conversations about social justice concerns (Friends of the Earth 2013; Chang 2018). The tour culminated in the group gathering at Tony Abbott’s electorate of Warringah in Sydney’s Northern Beaches on federal election day, where they were allegedly threatened with arrest by the local Mayor, who was reported to have taken offence at the banners (Friends of the Earth 2013). Despite their efforts, Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party were successfully elected to lead the country.

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Social justice has also been at the core of craftivist Shannon Downey’s work. Better known as Badass Cross Stitch to her followers, Downey came to the attention of a global audience in 2016 when she created an embroidery with the message ‘boys will be boys held accountable for their fucking actions’ in response to Donald Trump’s Access Hollywood tape,3 leaked in the lead up to the 2016 US Presidential election (Duncan 2017). Following this up in the January 2017 Chicago Women’s March with an embroidered hoop stating ‘I’m so angry I stitched this just so I could stab something 3,000 times’, Downey has quickly become a high-profile figure in the craftivist world on social justice, race, and gender issues (Duncan 2017). Before her more recent project, Badass HERStory, a ‘global craftivism project meant to capture and share the stories of as many women, female-identified, and gender non-binary humans as possible’ (Downey 2018), Downey initiated the #EndGunViolence project, inviting people from around the globe to knit, crochet, felt, weave, embroider, or cross-stitch guns from a pattern made available via her website. Speaking on the objective of the project, Downey (cited in Duncan 2017) related, ‘My gun violence craftivism project was because I was here [in Chicago] and because the gun violence here matters so deeply to me and is so pervasive. But it seems so surmountable if we really want it to be’. The project culminated in a public display of over 200 submissions from around the world, that were then auctioned off, raising over US$5000 for Project FIRE, ‘an artist development employment program that… combines glass arts education, mentoring and trauma psycho-education to support trauma recovery and create employment opportunities for young people who have been shot or witnessed the homicide of a loved one’ (Badass Cross Stitch 2018). Social justice advocacy is also the underlying philosophy behind the Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA), an education program founded in 2017 by teacher and sewer Sara Trail that uses textiles as a vehicle for social change (Social Justice Sewing Academy 2018). Originating as a

3 In October 2016, shortly before the US Presidential Election vote, a 2005 video recording was leaked to the media where presidential candidate, Donald Trump, was heard making offensive remarks about women, including the phrase ‘Grab them by the pussy’ (Benoit 2017; Fahrenthold 2016).

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6-week Summer education pilot program funded by a grant from UC Berkeley, the SJSA now delivers workshops across America—in schools, prisons, and community centres—that aim to empower young people to tell stories about what has affected them via the medium of patchwork. The patchwork blocks designed and sewn by participants are then embroidered by volunteers and sewn into quilts for exhibition in shows and galleries across the United States, with each block accompanied by a statement by its creator detailing the issues that form the focus of their piece (Social Justice Sewing Academy 2018; Fehr 2019; Create Whimsy, n.d.). Pairing sewing lessons with a curriculum focused on social justice that draws on the disciplines of ethnic studies, gender and women’s studies, education and sociology, and concepts such as ‘colorism, intersectionality, feminist epistemology, and misogyny’ (Crafty Planner 2017), the main objective of SJSA is to create the space and in which the young participants feel safe and the tools with which ‘to develop a critical lens allowing understanding of the social issues that plague their communities’ (Britex Fabrics 2016). The inspiration for the Academy draws on Trail’s own experience of using sewing as a tool for protest. Following the death of Trayvon Martin4 in Florida in 2012, Trail, who was the same age as Martin when he died, created a quilt portrait of Martin, which she presented to his mother at a Black Lives Matter event (Pleasant 2017). This experience prompted Trail to explore the possibilities of using sewing as a way to engage young people with social justice issues, culminating in the creation of the Academy. Crime and its effects have become central to many craftivist efforts to change the way crime affects the lives, for both victims and offenders. In a suburb of Brisbane, Australia, knitting is one element of an attempt to memorialise a victim of crime by way of a monument created in the park where the woman was murdered by her partner in 2010. The monument—which includes a yarn bomb attached to a tree at the scene of the crime—has grown organically as family, friends, and others affected by domestic violence leave objects at the site as a token of remembrance

4 Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old African American high school student, was shot and killed while walking through Sanford, Florida in 2012. Local neighbourhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted of charges over Martin’s death in 2013 (CNN 2019) and prompted a national conversation about race and criminal justice.

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(Wolfe 2018). When the local council threatened to remove the memorial in 2018 due to purported public health and safety concerns, public outcry led to the council promising to work with the victim’s family to ‘provide a safe and friendly place for the family to reflect in the long term, which is also suitable for a public park’ (Wolfe 2018). In Mexico, craftivism is also being used as a way to remember the murdered and missing as a result of the War on Drugs (Long 2017; Daly Goggin 2014). Since 2011, a group called Fuentes Rojas (Red Fountains) have used a range of activities to raise awareness around the US–Mexico Drug War (Daly Goggin 2014: 2). One particular project of the group, Bordados por la Paz (Embroidering for Peace), sees members of the group memorialise the names and stories of the murdered and missing by embroidering handkerchiefs—red thread for the murdered; black thread for journalists who have died; pink or purple thread for victims of femicide; and green thread for the missing—which are then displayed in the main square of Mexico City’s Coyoacán district (Long 2017; Cocking 2018). The practice has subsequently taken hold in other cities in Mexico and beyond and, as Professor of Rhetoric and Composition Maureen Daly Goggin notes, ‘in stitching the activist memorial sampler for every victim, the embroiderers are stitching against the normalization of violence that has taken over during the last half a dozen years in Mexico’ (Daly Goggin 2014: 7). Craft was similarly central to the protest movement led by antiPinochet pro-democracy supporters in Chile between 1973 and 1990, who resisted General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship in myriad ways, including in the form of embroidered and appliqued ­‘arpilleras’,5 brightly coloured tapestries and quilt squares embroidered and appliqued with scenes depicting Chilean life under Pinochet (Adams 2000, 2002; Moya-Raggio 1984; Agostin 2008). Accused of a regime of political repression, damaging neoliberal economic policies, violence, torture and executions, and the ‘disappearance’ of dissidents, the effects of Pinochet’s rule were told via these quilt squares, which visually ‘protested the injustice of the regime’ by depicting its impacts in textile form (Onion 2014). As Moya-Raggio (1984: 278) explained:

5 The

Spanish word for burlap (Greer 2014: 134).

38  A. McGOVERN [The arpilleras are] produced collectively and with a clear sense of urgency. They are one of the most beautiful, yet forceful and effective, expressions of resistance in the country. Arpilleras are made out of pieces of material combined and juxtaposed to depict scenes ranging from the most simple and basic to the most elaborate and complex… they have borne witness to the reality of the Chilean people’s existence under the military junta-the search for the disappeared, the vigils for prisoners, the arbitrary arrests, extreme poverty, unemployment, and so on. Most importantly, the arpilleras incorporate women as active participants in the struggle, and they carry a strong social and human message.

Serving as a testimonial to life under Pinochet, these quilt blocks provided a narrative and form of expression that their creators, primarily women living in shantytowns, were ‘previously denied’ (Moya-Raggio 1984: 281). Engaging in workshops set up by the Catholic Church—critics of the Pinochet regime—and accompanied by discussions of political events, human rights, and their circumstances in Chile, the women created their arpilleras as a way to subvert the political regime (Adams 2000: 621). Creations were subsequently sold overseas, which not only provided the women with some form of income, but also allowed the purchasers to show solidarity with the Chileans (Adams 2000: 621) (Fig. 2.5). The use of craft as a way to both make money and share stories and experiences in textile form is also replicated in the philosophy of Fine Cell Work, a social enterprise project that teaches prisoners how to sew, and provides them with the opportunity to earn an income, work independently on projects during cell lock-up time, and develop skills and contacts for life post release (Adamson 2013: 227; Fishwick and McGovern 2019; Fine Cell Work 2019). Founded in the 1980s by social reformer Lady Anne Tree, Fine Cell Work currently operates across 32 prisons in the UK and has been found to provide ‘important benefits for individuals, making them feel that they were being productive, developing skills and confidence, reducing anxiety and depression, earning money for themselves and their families, and that they had something to do in the long hours in confinement’ (Fishwick and McGovern 2019: 273; Graham and White 2014; Fine Cell Work 2019; Stanford 2010). One of the most affective pieces created by these prisoners is the collaboratively created HMP Wandsworth quilt commissioned and displayed by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which bears witness to the experiences, stories, emotions, and lives of more than 52

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Fig. 2.5  Example of arpillera quilt block on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

inmates at HMP Wandsworth, the biggest prison in London (Massey 2010; Victoria and Albert Museum 2019). The design of the quilt mirrors the architectural layout of the prison, which is based on Bentham’s panopticon, with each participating inmate given their own hexagon patch within which to stitch their preferred design (Victoria and Albert Museum 2019). As Adamson (2013: 227) details: The motifs [stitched by the inmates] range from protestations of innocence—‘I didn’t do it guv! Honest!!—to the everyday material culture of the jail. Together they amount to a closely observed picture of day-to-day life at Wandsworth… Whether placed on view at a press conference, hung in an art gallery, or reproduced in the pages of this book, it serves to raise awareness not only about the prisoners and their lives, but also about Fine Cell Work itself… The quilt is equal parts affective memory work and pragmatic activism.

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The lives and rights of prisoners have similarly inspired a series of projects from artist and craftivist Carrie Reichardt. Using ceramics and mosaic art, Reichardt has campaigned for the rights of prisoners on death row, including John Joe ‘Ash’ Amador and Luis Ramirez, both sentenced to death for murder in the state of Texas, as well as the Angola Three, who spent decades in solitary confinement in a Louisiana prison (Reichardt, n.d.). Her mosaic works—the Tiki Love Truck, a ‘mobile mosaic mausoleum’ dedicated to the memory of John Joe ‘Ash’ Amador and featuring his death mask, made following his execution; the Voodoo Zulu Liberation Taxi, a mosaiced taxi cab drawing attention in particular to the treatment of Kenny ‘Zulu’ Whitmore, one of the Angola Three, during his time in prison; and a number of mosaic murals on the walls of her West London home—bear witness to what Reichardt has described as the cruel and unjust criminal justice system (Campbell 2007; Reichardt, n.d.; Greer 2014: 148–153; Haidrani 2019; Inspiring City 2018) (Fig. 2.6).

Fig. 2.6  Carrie Reichardt’s Tiki Love Truck on exhibit at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

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Gendered Violence and Bodily Autonomy Craftivism The use of craft to highlight feminist causes, petition for bodily autonomy, or address gendered violence is a theme that already cuts across many of the aforementioned examples. Here, however, I wish to highlight some of the projects that have specifically taken these themes as a central tenet. It should be noted that while not all of these craftivist acts identify as being explicitly feminist, to borrow from Clarke’s (2016: 298) analysis of craftivism, they arguably ‘repeat and reproduce feminist ideas and feelings’. Indeed, the connection between craft and feminism is a long-standing one (see for example Parker 2010), so it is no surprise then that crafts have been used explicitly as a way to highlight the concerns of women, and to call for greater self-determination. The craftivist activities of the suffragettes, for example, were intimately connected with their campaign to change ideas about femininity and win women the right to vote (Parker 2010: 197; Wheeler 2012: n.p.). According to Adamson (2013: 222), the primary handmade medium of the suffragettes was the protest banner. Decorated in embroidery, fabric applique, and collages, the banners frequently featured the green, purple, and white colours of the suffrage movement, and included refrains such as ‘ASK WITH COURAGE’, ‘ALLIANCE AND DEFIANCE’, and ‘DARE TO BE FREE’ (Parker 2010: 198; Adamson 2013: 222). Made collectively, the banners were brandished as a sign of feminine strength and in the name of equal rights (Adamson 2013: 222; Parker 2010: 199). Likewise fighting for equal rights is The Handmaid Coalition. Named after Margaret Atwood’s feminist dystopian novel The Handmaids Tale (1985), The Handmaid Coalition (2018), established in 2017, describes itself as a political action group whose mission is to ‘to combat misogyny and the oppression of marginalized groups perpetuated through legislation and government policy’. Taking inspiration from the iconic imagery of Atwood’s text, and seeking to ‘keep fiction from becoming reality’, the group provides instructions for members to ‘recreate the puritan-inspired garb of the Margaret Atwood novel’ (Bahler 2018)—a red cape and white, winged bonnet—which can be worn at protests, demonstrations, and marches and serves as a stark visual accompaniment (The Handmade Coalition 2017). Reproductive rights have also been a target for craftivist campaigns (Clarke 2016). The Wombs on Washington project in 2005, for example, was initiated by the online knitting community Knit4Choice as a

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way to address ‘ownership over women’s bodies and legal rights to abortion’ (Pentney 2008: 6). Drawing inspiration from a knitting pattern of a womb, the group encouraged knitters to ‘create knitted wombs to drop on the Supreme Court steps in Washington, DC, in symbolic protest of attempts to restrict abortion laws in the United States and in continued support of the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973’ (Pentney 2008: 6). While it appears that the proposed ‘womb drop’ did not eventuate due to division within the group over the mission of the project and a lack of organisation (Browning 2015: 18), the initiative did inspire other crafters to take up the womb design and similarly lobby legislators on the topics of abortion rights and bodily autonomy, a theme that has also characterised some of the works of craftivist Casey Jenkins6 (see Clarke 2016). Crafts have also been used to address issues of sexual assault and violence against women. American-born Australian contemporary artist Kate Just’s KNIT SAFE and KNIT HOPE banner projects in the UK and Australia, for example, were envisaged as a way to explore global concerns over acts of violence against women, and women’s personal safety and freedom (McGovern 2014). With contributions from members of the public, the project resulted in the creation of two banners, one ‘a large scale high visibility, night reflective black and silver knitted banner that spells SAFE in block letters’ (KNIT SAFE Project 2013), the other a ‘night-reflective fluorescent yellow banner that spells the word HOPE in silver block letters’ (Just 2014), which were the feature pieces at a series of night walks aimed at highlighting these issues and serving as a show of collective resistance (Just 2014). Outlining the KNIT SAFE project, Just explained that the project sought to ‘…create a counter-point to ideas of women’s isolation or impending vulnerability … KNIT SAFE will explore the value of collectivity and optimism. Join knitting events and SAFE walks to reclaim your city with craft’ (KNIT SAFE Project 2013).

6 In 2013 Jenkins’ performance art work, titled ‘Casting Off My Womb’, gained worldwide attention. The 28-day performance saw Jenkins knit a ‘15m long passage from yarn inserted daily in their vagina to mark one full menstrual cycle’ (Jenkins n.d.). According to Clarke (2016: 303), while Jenkins’ performance was primarily centred on cultural responses to menstruation, ‘in the domestic items used – knitting needles and coat hangers – a link to political histories of abortion and reproductive rights [could] also be found’.

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Similarly drawing attention to violence against women is The Monument Quilt (n.d.), a project initiated by Baltimore-based creative activist collective, FORCE, that aims to ‘upset the culture of rape and promote a culture of consent’ (Force, n.d.; Flagg 2019). Through a series of quilt-making workshops around the United States and Mexico, the collective provided support to survivors as they created their quilt blocks, making a concerted effort to encourage the involvement of marginalised populations, so their voices could also be heard (Haupt 2019). Envisaged as a way to support victims of sexual violence and help them heal, the final quilt featured over 3000 individual quilt blocks, each written, drawn, or stitched with the ‘personal stories of survivors’ of sexual and intimate partner violence and their supporters (Flagg 2019; The Monument Quilt, n.d.). The creation and displaying of the full quilt—which occurred in Washington D.C.’s National Mall, the site of Presidential inaugurations and the Women’s March—aimed to disrupt public discourse on sexual violence. As the project’s website states, ‘[o] ur stories literally blanket highly public, outdoor places to create and demand space to heal, and resist a singular narrative about sexual violence’ (The Monument Quilt, n.d.). The recent #MeToo movement, which was founded in 2006 to help victim/survivors of sexual violence—but came to global prominence via social media in 2017 in the aftermath of sexual assault allegations against Hollywood’s Harvey Weinstein (me too 2018; Fileborn et al. 2019)—has likewise prompted a number of craftivist responses. For example, Söderström Gardevåg (2018: 28) documented her attendance at a #MeToo tagging event in Sweden in 2017, where participants were invited to craft a ‘tag’ related to the topic. Choosing to cross-stitch a mini banner with the phrase ‘in solidarity with #metoo’, Söderström Gardevåg (2018: 28–29) related how the tags created by other participants were ‘deeply personal as they told their stories of experiencing sexual abuse and assault’. The power of craft to fight for women’s rights was no more visible though than on January 21, 2017 at the first Women’s March, a women-led movement that coalesced in Washington D.C. in a show of ‘nonviolent resistance’ aimed at creating social change and as a response to the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States (Women’s March 2019). The March stood out for many reasons,

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including that it occurred just one day after the inauguration of Trump and appeared to attract protesters in numbers much greater than had attended his inauguration. Some of the most affecting visuals of the March were the undulating pink waves that flooded the streets, rolling forward with the movement of the crowd by virtue of the pink knitted hats that adorned the heads of many of those in attendance. The ‘Pussyhat’, as it came to be known—a pink hat made of yarn with two pointed cat-like ears—was the creation of Americans Krista Suh and Jayna Zweiman, who in November 2016 launched the Pussyhat Project in response to Trump’s misogynistic comments about women during the presidential election campaign (Literat and Markus 2019). In launching the Project, Suh and Zweiman had two stated aims. To: 1. Provide the people of the Women’s March on Washington D.C. a means to make a unique collective visual statement which will help activists be better heard. 2. Provide people who cannot physically be on the National Mall a way to represent themselves and support women’s rights (Suh and Zweiman 2016). The Project’s website provided participants with a series of patterns— originally for knitting, and subsequently for sewing and crocheting— from which they could craft a Pussyhat (for themselves or someone else), as well as guidance on how to source yarn, where to attend Pussyhat making gatherings, and suggestions on how to donate completed hats to others wishing to don the headwear (Suh and Zwieman 2016). The success of the Project was evident in the sheer number of Pussyhats at the Washington March, as well as other marches around the globe, and demonstrates the translation of an online campaign into ‘real world’ action. At the same time, however, the Pussyhat reignited conversations about craft and protest, feminism and (racial and gender) inclusion,7 the historical place of craft as a tool for social change, and whether or not the Project actually led to any meaningful change (Black 2017; Paulins et al. 2018; Feliz 2017). 7 One of the biggest criticisms the movement faced was accusations that it was not inclusive, failing to consider intersectionalities, and in particular excluding transpeople and women of colour (Black 2017; Feliz 2017).

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The Logics of Craftivism While not claiming to be an exhaustive account, the examples of craftivist practices detailed above demonstrate the ongoing place of crafts in small- and large-scale forms of activism. Overlaying most, if not all, of these acts have been broader feminist concerns around the role, place, and treatment of women in society, and the designation of crafts as women’s work. As a way of providing a big picture overview of the craftivism that has been evident in these examples, here I wish to summarise what I see are the key logics of craftivism that emerged both from the thematic breakdown of craftivist examples, as well as existing literature on the topic of craftivism. In her previous publications on knitting (Knitting for Good 2008) and craftivism (Craftivism: The Art and Craft of Activism 2014), Betsy Greer wrote about her journey towards becoming a craftivist, documenting the way in which her personal interests in crafts such as knitting have grown and become more community and politically oriented. Similarly organising her books to cover the personal, community, and political ways in which individuals practice and engage with their creativity and crafts, Greer’s discussion of craftivism articulates a broad definition of what ‘counts’ as craftivism, as well as tracing an arguably linear pathway from the personal benefits of craft, through to political and community building efforts. Similarly, Pentney (2008: 1) in her analysis of knitting as a feminist practice stated that: If feminist knitting practices occur on a continuum, where women’s community building and celebration of knitting as a domestic art are located at one end of the spectrum and outreach and fundraising activities […] are located towards the middle, then the other end of the spectrum is occupied by public forms of political protest, including rallies, marches, and public displays.

Building on the ways in which both Greer (2008; 2014) and Pentney (2008) have articulated the practice, I wish to advance an argument that craftivist practices operate across three key logics or themes, which are overlapping, interrelated, and fluid. Thus, rather than existing along a spectrum or continuum from ‘less political’ to ‘more political’ in ­motivation or intention, as Pentney argues with her analysis of feminist knitting, or as separate orientations as they appear in Greer’s works,

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I see these acts as embodying different degrees or levels of politicisation, functioning instead within a set of interconnected logics (see Fig. 2.7). In essence, like Greer (2008), I argue that all of these acts are craftivist, and like Greer (2008) and Pentney (2008), I see these logics as consisting of the ‘personal’, the ‘community’, and the ‘political’. However, ‘[w]hile these logics can be analysed as empirically discrete, in practice I argue that they overlap, and mutually reinforce and influence one another’ (Lee and McGovern 2014: 40). That is, acts of craftivism are located within and across the logics of the ‘personal’, the ‘community’, and the ‘political’; they are interlinked and, thus, particular craftivist acts can move between and across these key logics, while remaining craftivist at their core. To unpack these logics further, let us take a look first at the personal, which is often referred to as belonging to one end of a continuum of craftivism. As detailed in Fig. 2.7, personal logics can involve individuals and groups engaging with craft for reasons of enjoyment, therapy, and relaxation, or as a form of creative and personal expression. However,

Fig. 2.7  The logics of craftivism

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personal acts of craftivism are not restricted to that category. For example, when the personal logic overlaps with a community logic, this may manifest in practices such as creating for the benefit of others. Similarly, community logics may be evidenced in the use of craft as a community building activity, but when this logic overlaps or intersects with a political logic, these craft practices may also be motivated by a desire to activate communities or raise an awareness and visibility of issues. Similarly, while a political logic may be expressed through public protests and championing for change, it can also overlap and intersect with the personal logic when it involves considerations of self-determination of self-sufficiency. In this way, acts are not only defined as exemplars of craftivism when they are understood to be driven by a political logic, such as in the form of public protest, agenda setting, and championing change. Rather, craftivism is evidenced in and activated across all logics, from the personal, to the community, and the political and back again. Something as simple as knitting for ones own well-being can be just as much a form of craftivism as organising and participating in a large-scale craft project to protest an issue is. So, drawing on the arguments of Pentney (2008), Groeneveld (2010) and Kelly (2014), while not all craft acts should be considered explicitly political in their intentions or motivations, I argue the examples outlined above, and many that will follow in my discussion of yarn bombing, demonstrate that acts of craft can be mobilised for political or activist ends, and that these ends both vary in scope and are context-specific, yet still fit within the sphere of craftivism.

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Hermanson, T. (2012). Knitting as Dissent: Female Resistance in America Since the Revolutionary War. In Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, 696. Available at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/696. Ings, W. (2016). The Creative Guerrilla: Makers, Organisations and Belonging. In T. Pernecky (Ed.), Approaches and Methods in Event Studies. London: Routledge. Inspiring City. (2018). 30 Hidden Secrets of Carrie Reichardt’s Extraordinary Mosaic House in Chiswick. Inspiring City. Available at: https://inspiringcity. com/2018/02/10/the-hidden-secrets-of-carrie-reichardts-mosaic-house/. Jenkins, C. (n.d.). Casting off My Womb. Casey Jenkins. Available at: https:// casey-jenkins.com/works/casting-off-my-womb/. Just, K. (2014). HOPE & SAFE. Kate Just. Available at: http://www.katejust. com/hope-safe. Kelly, M. (2014). Knitting as a Feminist Project? Women’s Studies International Forum, 44, 133–144. Knit a River. (2006). Knit a River Blogspot. Available at: http://knitariver.blogspot.com/. KNIT SAFE Project. (2013). KNIT SAFE Project. Knit Safe Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/knitsafe/posts/1438843142994151?stream_ ref=10. Knitting Nannas Against Gas. (2016). The Nannafesto. Available at https://knitting-nannas.com/philosphy.php. Langton, M. (1994). Aboriginal Art and Film: The Politics of Representation. Race and Class, 35(4), 89–106. Lauchs, M., & Bartels, L. (2013). Factcheck: Will the Queensland Bikie Laws Affect Innocent Riders. The Conversation, 23 October. Available at: https://theconversation.com/factcheck-will-the-queensland-bikie-laws-affect-innocent-riders-19329. Lee, M., & McGovern, A. (2014). Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations and Communications. London: Routledge. Literat, I., & Markus, S. (2019). ‘Crafting a Way Forward’: Online Participation, Craftivism and Civic Engagement in Ravelry’s Pussyhat Project Group. Information, Communication and Society, Online First, 1–16. Long, E. (2017). Bordados por la Paz y la Memoria—Embroideries for Peace and Memory. The Amnesty. Available at: https://theamnesty. org/2017/10/11/bordados-por-la-paz-y-la-memoria-embroideries-forpeace-and-memory/. Martin-Chew, L. (2019). For Aboriginal Artists, Personal Stories Matter. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/for-aboriginal-artistspersonal-stories-matter-113029. Massey, B. (2010). An Insider’s View: Fine Cell Work by Barley Massey of Fabrications. Craftivist Collective. Available at: https://craftivist-collective. com/blog/2010/09/an-insiders-view-fine-cell-work-by-barley-masseyof-fabrications/.

54  A. McGOVERN McBride, L. (2012). “Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops” Mini Protest Banner Project. Craftivist Collective. Available at: https://craftivist-collective.com/ blog/2012/08/love-fashion-hate-sweatshops-mini-protest-banner-workshop-at-fabrications/. McGovern, A. (2014). Crafting for Good: Why We All Want to Knit for Penguins. The Conversation. Available at: https://theconversation.com/ crafting-for-good-why-we-all-want-to-knit-for-penguins-24291. McKinnon, A. (2014). Knitting Nannas and Vaginal Scarves: Why Craftivism Is Your New Favourite Thing. Junkee. Available at: https://junkee.com/ craftivism-is-your-new-favourite-thing/30962. me too. (2018). About. Me Too Movement. Available at: https://metoomvmt. org/about/. Mervosh, S. (2019). ‘Knitting Has Always Been Political’: Ravelry Bans ­Pro-Trump Content, and Reactions Flood In. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/24/style/ravelry-knitting-ban-trump. html. microRevolt. (2019). Mission. microRevolt. Available at: http://www.microrevolt.org/mission.htm. Moya-Raggio, E. (1984). “Arpilleras”: Chilean Culture of Resistance. Feminist Studies, 10(2), 277–290. Nandi, J. (2019). A Knitting Movement of Weather Data to Document Climate Change. Hindustan Times. Available at: https://www.hindustantimes.com/ india-news/a-knitting-movement-of-weather-data-to-document-climatechange/story-cHzHw0KuVLEAAaIt1PphjM.html. Nardi, A. (2013). Political Knitters Put Needle to Thread. CityNews.com.au. Available at: http://citynews.com.au/2013/knit-your-revolt-demonstration/. Nargi, L. (2011). Astounding Knits! 101 Spectacular Knitted Creations and Daring Feats. Minneapolis, MN: Voyageur Press. Nanashire. (n.d.). Nanashire Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook. com/Nanashire1/. New Domesticity. (2011). Knitting at Occupy Wall Street. New Domesticity: Thoughts About Women and Homemaking in the 21st Century. Available at: http://newdomesticity.com/?p=106. Newmeyer, T. (2008). Knit One, Stitch Two, Protest Three! Examining the Historical and Contemporary Politics of Crafting. Leisure/Loisir, 32(2), 437–460. Onion, R. (2014). The Colorful Quilt Squares Chilean Women Used to Tell the Story of Life Under Pinochet. Slate. Available at: https://slate.com/ human-interest/2014/09/history-of-quilting-arpilleras-made-by-chilean-women-to-protest-pinochet.html. Pace, L. (2007). Changing the World One Stitch at a Time: Knitting as a Means of Social and Political Activism. M.A. Thesis, University of Akron.

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Parker, R. (2010). The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine. London: I.B. Tauris. Paulins, V. A., Hillery, J., Howell, A., Malcom, N., & Martindale, A. (2018). Same Time, Next Year: Evolution of the Pussyhat’s Symbolism. In International Textile and Apparel Association (ITAA) Annual Conference Proceedings (p. 70). Available at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/itaa_proceedings/2018/posters/70. Pentney, B. A. (2008). Feminism, Activism, and Knitting: Are the Fibre Arts a Viable Mode for Feminist Political Action? Thirdspace: A Journal of Feminist Theory & Culture, 8(1). Available at: http://journals.sfu.ca/thirdspace/ index.php/journal/article/view/%20pentney/210. Phillips, M. (2013). Metgasco’s Withdrawal from Northern Rivers a Recognition of Community Opposition to CSG. Media Release: Jeremy Buckingham NSW MP. Available at: https://jeremybuckingham.org/2013/03/13/metgascos-withdrawal-from-northern-rivers-a-recognition-of-community-opposition-to-csg/. Pleasant, A. (2017). Raising Social Justice Awareness One Quilt at a Time. Huffpost. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/raising-social-justice-awareness-one-quilt-at-a-time_b_59c049c7e4b0f96732cbc886. Portwood-Stacer, L. (2007). Do-It-Yourself Feminism: Feminine Individualism and the Girlie Backlash in the DIY/Craftivism Movement. Paper presented at the International Communication Association Convention, San Francisco, CA. Rall, D., & Costello, M. (2010). Women, Craft and Protest: Yesterday and Today. Australian Folklore, 25, 79–96. Reichardt, C. (n.d.). Carrie Reichardt: I’m an Artist Your Rules Don’t Apply. Available at: http://www.carriereichardt.com/. Revolutionary Knitting Circle. (2017). The Revolutionary Knitting Circle Proclamation of Constructive Revolution. Revolutionary Knitting Circle Facebook. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/notes/revolutionary-knitting-circle/the-revolutionary-knitting-circle-proclamation-of-constructive-revolution/404260833246530/. Robertson, K. (2011). Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History. In M. E. Buszek (Ed.), Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (pp. 184–185). Durham: Duke University Press. Ryan, B., & Santow, S. (2013). Qld Government’s Tough Anti-bikie Laws Passed After Marathon Debate in Parliament. ABC News. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-16/qlds-tough-anti-bikie-lawspassed-after-marathon-parliament-/5025242. Sargent, D. (2017). Repurposing Augmented Reality Browsers for Acts of Creative Subversion. Presented at the CW 2017, Brisbane, Australia. Schuster, J. (2014). Where Have All the Feminists Gone? Searching for New Zealand’s Women’s Movement in the Early 21st Century. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Auckland.

56  A. McGOVERN Singhal, A., & Greiner, K. (2008). Performance Activism and Civic Engagement Through Symbolic and Playful Actions. Journal of Development Communication, 19(2), 43–53. Social Justice Sewing Academy. (2018). Social Justice Sewing Academy. Available at: http://www.sjsacademy.com/. Söderström Gardevåg, R. (2018). Crafting Feminism—A Study of the Intersection of Crafts and Contemporary Feminisms in Sweden. M.A. Thesis, Linköping University. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/f5e2/ 28728be1e935cf341e4089ede6f49377daec.pdf. Stanford, P. (2010). Lady Anne Tree Obituary. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2010/aug/20/lady-anne-tree-obituary. Stevens, L. (2016). ‘Sometimes Uncomfortable, Sometimes Arousing’: The Slow Dramaturgy of Casey Jenkins’s Craftivist Performances. Theatre Research International, 41, 168–180. Stops, L. (2014). Les Tricoteuses: The Plain and Purl of Solidarity and Protest. Craft + Design Enquiry, 6, 7–28. Suh, K., & Zwieman, J. (2016). Our Mission. Pussyhat Project. Available at: https://www.pussyhatproject.com/blog/2016/11/22/our-mission. The Handmaid Coalition. (2017). The Handmaid’s Guide. Action Together New Hampshire. Available at: https://handmaidcoalition.org/the-handmaidsguide. The Handmaid Coalition. (2018). About. The Handmaid Coalition. Available at: https://handmaidcoalition.org/about-cover. The Monument Quilt. (n.d.). The Monument Quilt. Available at: https:// themonumentquilt.org/. The Stitch. (2013). Knit Your Revolt: Why My Tricycle Gang Is Taking on Queensland’s Bikie Laws. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/09/knit-your-revolt-why-mytricycle-gang-is-taking-on-queenslands-bikie-laws. The Tempestry Project. (2019). The Tempestry Project. Available at: https:// www.tempestryproject.com/. Tit Bits. (2005). Tit Bits Website. Available at: http://www.titbits.ca. Tsang, B. (2005). Tit Bits. Knitty: Little Purls of Wisdom. Available at: http:// knitty.com/ISSUEfall05/PATTbits.html. Tunstall, E. (2015). Be Rooted: Learning from Aboriginal Dyeing and Weaving. The Conversation, August 11. Available at: https://theconversation.com/ be-rooted-learning-from-aboriginal-dyeing-and-weaving-45940. Turney, J. (2009). The Culture of Knitting. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Vandellous, F. (2014). Woolly Thinking: Why I Yarnbombed Queensland Parliament. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/ commentisfree/2014/feb/14/queensland-parliament-campbell-newman.

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Victoria and Albert Museum. (2019). The HMP Wandsworth Quilt. Victoria and Albert Museum website. Available at: https://www.vam.ac.uk/articles/ hmp-wandsworth-quilt. Visible Mending. (2019). Visible Mending website. Available at: https://visiblemending.com/pages/whys-it-got-to-be-visible. Wellington Craftivism Collective. (n.d.). Our Occupy Blanket. Wellington Craftivism Collective Blogspot. Available at: http://wellingtoncraftivism.blogspot.com/p/our-occupy-blanket.html. Wheeler, E. (2012). The Political Stitch: Voicing Resistance in Suffrage Textile. In Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, 758. Available at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/758/. Willard, M. (2004). History of Research on African Factory-Printed Cloth and Current Approaches in the Field. In Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings, 447. Available at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/tsaconf/447. Witkowski, J. (2015). Knit for Defence, Purl to Control. InVisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture, 22, 1–22. Wolfe, N. (2018). Council Blasted by Mum over Memorial: ‘I Can’t Lose This’. The Queensland Times, 9 February. Available at: https://www.qt.com.au/ news/council-under-fire-for-plans-to-alter-memorial-for/3330819/. Women’s March. (2019). Misson and Principles. Women’s March. Available at: https://womensmarch.com/mission-and-principles. Youngson, B. (2019). Craftivism for Occupational Therapists: Finding Our Political Voice. British Journal of Occupational Therapy, 82(6): 383–385.

CHAPTER 3

The Itch to Stitch: Yarn Bombers and Their Motivations

Abstract  This chapter turns its attention to the practice of yarn ­bombing. Beginning with an overview of the origins of yarn bombing, including some of the criticisms of the practice, the chapter then goes on to consider what motivates yarn bombers to do what they do. Drawing on interviews with ‘everyday’ yarn bombers, the chapter presents a thematic analysis of these motivations and, in doing so, demonstrates the intersections of the personal, community, and political logics of craftivism as they play out in the activities of yarn bombers. Keywords  Yarn bombing · Magda Sayeg · Yarn bombing motivations Subversion · Exceptionalism · Beautification · Pleasure · Reclaiming public space · Anti-consumerism · Tactics of resistance

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As the previous chapter demonstrated, crafts are deployed in myriad ways to engage with a range of personal, political, and social concerns (Fig. 3.1). This chapter seeks to extend upon our understandings of the use of craft as a form of activism through an examination of the motivations and intentions that underlie the contemporary practice of yarn bombing. Drawing on interviews with ‘everyday’ yarn bombers, this chapter presents the thematic analysis of the reasons why individuals yarn bomb by considering what are the motivating factors underlying their engagement in the practice, and what impacts yarn bombers hope to make in their practice, both on themselves and others. In doing so, © The Author(s) 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1_3

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Fig. 3.1  Yarn bombed tree 2013, Melbourne, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

the chapter demonstrates the intersections of personal, community, and political logics as they play out in the motivations of yarn bombers. Before presenting the findings of this analysis, however, I start the chapter with an overview of the definition and origins of yarn bombing as a way of situating this form of street craft in its context. I also reflect on some of the criticisms of the practice, particularly in terms of its naming and positioning as a subversive act, which forms an important foundation for some of the later discussion and analysis in Chapter 4.

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Defining Yarn Bombing When I first became aware of yarn bombing, ‘academic’ definitions of the practice were largely absent, leading me to turn to the internet to find out how the phenomenon was being defined. The first definition I came across was on Urban Dictionary, which described yarn bombing as: A type of graffiti or street art that employs colorful displays of knitted or crocheted cloth, rather than paint or chalk. While yarn installations – called yarn bombs or knit bombs – may last for years, they are considered non-permanent, and, unlike graffiti, can be easily removed if necessary… (LuckyEwe 2010)

As scholarly interest has turned towards the phenomenon, the parameters of yarn bombing, as well as the underlying motivations of those who practice it, have taken shape in the academic literature, mostly mirroring these early, popular interpretations. To restate geographer Joanna Mann’s (2015) definition, which can also be found in the opening pages of this book: Yarn bombing is a technique that merges street graffiti with the fibre work of knitting or crochet. Also known as ‘yarn storming’, ‘knit graffiti’ and ‘guerrilla knitting’, yarn bombing involves stealthily attaching handmade fibre items to street fixtures or parts of the urban landscape. These could be small and discreet installations on a bench handle or railing, or large and audacious pieces such as a tree wrap, or a cover for a bus.

Mann’s definition of the act itself is fairly congruous with how other scholars define it, however, when it comes to situating yarn bombing in relation to the broader socio-political contexts in which it takes place, we start to see greater variation in academic interpretations, including more political takes on the practice. For example, American Studies scholar, Kristen A. Williams (2011: 311), defines yarn bombing as a practice that primarily uses knitting (Figs. 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5): [To change the physical environment] in ways that explicitly challenge cultural norms that embrace or condone psychological violence and other forms of coercion resulting from hegemonic socialization. Sometimes yarn bombers dress naked statues (particularly those depicting the female form), while at other times they may dress antennae and street signs in “cozies” or knit subversive messages and post them anonymously.

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Fig. 3.2  Yarn bombed trees 2013, Melbourne, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern) Indeed, yarn-bombing ironically suggests by its very name that nonviolent protest is a valuable model of resisting not only physical violence but also the systemic (and often identity-based) violence manifested by and resulting from the unequal distribution of material and cultural resources enabling full and equal performances of citizenship.

And Shrestova and Jenkins’ (2016: 1) argue that yarn bombing can be understood as an act intended to subvert public space:

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Fig. 3.3  Yarn bombed street sign 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern) …yarn bombers “occupy” the urban landscape, creating works that catch the eye and hopefully generate discussion. Yarnbombers use these works to call attention to public eyesores, to offer alternative conceptions of how spaces might be used, and to call attention to local history and culture.

While these academic analyses articulate some of the specific ­factors that may explain the choices behind a person’s decision to yarn

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Fig. 3.4  Yarn bombed bike racks 2015, Sydney, Australia (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

bomb, as Moore and Prain’s (2009) more ‘mainstream’ characterisa­ tion highlights, there is a tendency for such factors to sit alongside the notion of the act as ‘humorous’ and ‘whimsical’, pointing to the wide-ranging reasons that motivate someone to yarn bomb. As Moore and Prain (2009: 18) state: People have various motivations to partake in yarn bombing. The juxtaposition of yarn and graffiti is humorous to some artists, while others see it as a more serious act that builds on a long-standing practice of renegade street art. Others do it to escape the boredom of tedious day jobs. Some want to liberate the needle arts from their long-held association with utilitarian purposes. Yarn bombing can be political, it can be heart-warming, and it can be funny.

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Fig. 3.5  Furby yarn bombing on fence 2016, Brooklyn, United States (Photo: Alyce McGovern)

While there is much to unpack in the statement above, including the casual dismissal of other forms of graffiti (a point that I will come back to later in the book), on the surface what this overview indicates is that, much like craftivist practices more generally, yarn bombers too appear to be motivated by different goals when partaking in the practice. It is these motivations that this chapter focuses on.

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The Origins of Yarn Bombing By most accounts, yarn bombing is said to have originated in the United States in around the year 2005, with former Texas shop owner, Magda Sayeg, regularly credited as being the ‘mother’ of yarn bombing (Moore and Prain 2009: 20; Kuittinen 2015: 182; Scheuing 2010: 2; Wollan 2011; Myzelev 2015: 58). Some, however, have pointed out that the true origins of the practice are more complicated. Ings (2016: 59) and Carpenter (2010: 1), for example, have suggested that the practice can be traced back as far as the 1960s with Filipino artist David Medalla’s Stitch in Time exhibition, where audiences were invited to sew small objects into a large cloth in public spaces (Another Vacant Space 2013), or more recently in the 1990s with Germaine Koh’s Knitwork project, which sees recycled yarn reknitted into a new piece (Koh, n.d.). Daly Goggin (2015) has also pinpointed a number of examples that suggest yarn bombing may have been practiced earlier than Sayeg’s ‘alpha piece’ (Moore and Prain 2009: 28). For example, Daly Goggin (2015: 163) claims that not only did the first yarn bomb take place in the Netherlands in 2004,1 but that fibre artist Olek introduced knitting and crochet into the outdoors in 2003, and that ‘as early as 1992, contemporary Canadian artist Janet Morton was covering up public spaces with crocheted and knitted pieces’. While there appears to be some dispute over the genesis of yarn bombing, Sayeg’s creation is arguably what put the practice on the map and took it outside of the remit of professional artists, empowering ordinary, everyday crafters to take their knitting and crochet to the streets. Sayeg’s popularisation of yarn bombing began when she decorated the door handle of her clothing store with pink and blue knitted yarn (Moore and Prain 2009: 20). Explaining that she was unhappy with the bland landscape around her, Sayeg (2015: 182), on a whim, decided to make what she described as a doorknob cosy for her shop: That first piece was a cold door handle that was inanimate and I wanted it to be warm and fuzzy and make me feel good. It didn’t really go beyond that – any more thought or ambition, but when I realised I liked it and other people liked it, that was when I wanted to continue doing it. (Sayeg cited in Greer 2010)

1 While this claim has been cited by papers subsequent to Daly Goggin’s article, I am ­unable to find any other documented information about this particular yarn bomb.

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The cosy attracted a significant amount of attention from passers-by, inspiring Sayeg to take the idea beyond her shop and, together with a friend, she explored the idea of tagging other areas of the urban environment with knitting (Greer 2010). Sayeg and her friend, known by the moniker ‘PolyCotN and AKrylik’, went on to establish a yarn bombing crew, who at night would head out and decorate fire hydrants, street signs, cars and other objects, ultimately inspiring the formation of other yarn bombing crews around the globe, particularly across Europe, North America, and Australasia2 (Moore and Prain 2009). The phenomenon has now taken on a life of its own and, as explored in this chapter, encompasses an assortment of approaches, methods, and styles with a variety of underlying objectives including, but not limited to, Sayeg’s original motivation, which was to brighten up an area. It has also been further bolstered by a large internet community who use online craft networks, such as Ravelry,3 and platforms such a Blogger, WordPress, Flickr, and Instagram to share photographs of their work, correspond with other yarn bombers, and coordinate installations and projects. The ephemeral nature of yarn bombs means that the internet has come to play a vital role in the practice. Online and virtual platforms and networks not only allow yarn bombers to maintain a record of their work and to alert each other as new pieces appear but they also, as Wallace (2012: 7) argues, function as part of a ‘complex patterning of social activity, or what Wittel (2001) terms “network sociality,” [which] is vital to craftivists’ ability to connect and for the movement to spread’. Google Trends data shows that worldwide searches for the term ‘yarn bombing’ started around 2008, a few years after Sayeg kicked off the movement, and peaked around 2012 (Google Trends 2019). The popularity of yarn bombing is such that the International Yarnbombing Day, first held on June 11, 2011, continues to be celebrated each year, and yarn bomb installations regularly pop up, not only in urban, inner-city areas, but also regional and remote communities as yarn bombers expand

2 Some of the more well-known yarn bombing crews include London’s Knit the City (UK), Stockholm’s Masquerade (Sweden), Ohio’s JafaGirls (US), Whitstable’s Incogknito (UK) and Melbourne’s Twilight Taggers (Australia). 3 Ravelry, founded in 2008, is an online social networking site for knitters and crocheters, where crafters can share patterns, materials, and advice about knit and crochet (Moore and Prain 2009: 28; Myzelev 2015).

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their repertoire.4 Magda Sayeg herself has also ridden this wave of popularity, reportedly now commanding upwards of US$70,000 to create yarn installations for commercial advertising campaigns (Daly Goggin 2015: 164), having long since closed her Texas clothing shop to pursue yarn bombing as a full-time career. Controversies and Criticisms While often portrayed as comical and harmless, yarn bombing has not been without its critics, highlighting the importance of looking beyond its quaint portrayal to engage with some of the more significant questions that have been raised about such characterisations. Oft cited criticisms of the potential damage of yarn bombs to the environment are one set of judgements that the practice faces, with some concerned of the potential to damage trees and other objects to which yarn bombs are attached. While many yarn bombers reject such concerns, stating that yarn bombs attached to tree trunks do not hinder the tree’s ability to ‘breathe’, fibre artist Olek (who it should be noted does not classify herself as a yarn bomber), did face criticism in 2014 for a crochet installation in a marine museum off the coast of Cancun, Mexico. At the time museum officials alleged that her work may have caused damage to marine life, an ironic accusation given that the installation had apparently aimed to raise awareness of marine protection (Thomas 2014; Daily Mail 2014). Others have criticised the unauthorised nature of yarn bombs, questioning why yarn bombers do not appear to face the same legal sanctions that other graffiti artists do for putting their work up in public spaces without approval, let alone for littering (Wollan 2011). The legal status of yarn bombing will be explored in more detail in Chapter 4, however, such questions do relate to another set of criticisms that have been

4 For example, in 2014 Murray Arts, a regional arts board, coordinated the yarn bombing of the HMAS Otway, a submarine memorial on display in the small coastal town of Holbrook, located near the border of Victoria and NSW, Australia. Featuring contributions of yellow knitted and crochet squares from around the globe, the ‘Yellow Submarine’ yarn bombing project aimed to pay tribute to the Beatles, as well as attract visitors to the regional town, which had suffered a downturn in tourism as a result of changing highway routes (Younger 2014).

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levelled at yarn bombing, that is, whether yarn bombing is a form of appropriation and an expression of privilege. According to communications scholar Hinda Mandell (2017), a closer examination of the term ‘yarn bombing’ pinpoints some problematic issues both in terms of how it is deployed, as well as its genesis. On the use of the term, Mandell has written of uncomfortable interactions she has had with people when she has used the term ‘yarn bomb’ to describe the practice. The word ‘bomb’ in particular sits uneasily with many communities, and while the intention of an installation may be to draw attention to, highlight or protest against atrocities such as war, where bombs are a source of devastation and destruction, the word itself can be jarring and off-putting to the very people the act is aimed at connecting with. Indeed, graffiti knitter ‘Deadly Knitshade’ of the crew Yarn in the City has been quoted as saying: ‘“In London, you can’t go throwing the word bombing around,” she says. “Yarn storming sounds more creative than bombing, which is destructive. It’s a bit more kooky and eccentric”’ (cited in Costa 2010). On the question of appropriation and privilege, the very origins of the term yarn bombing have come under fire from some scholars for the way that the term came about, as well as how it leverages off particular communities and cultures to create an aura of subversiveness around the practice. As is acknowledged in the literature, the first yarn bombers drew inspiration for their practice from the worlds of hip hop and graffiti, with the word ‘bomb’ deriving from graffiti vernacular, where it was used to refer to the painting or tagging of numerous surfaces in an area (Mandell 2017; Daly Goggin 2013: 14). That the practice draws inspiration from the urban graffiti movement of the 1980s and 1990s has been strongly criticised by a number of scholars, who see the positioning of yarn bombing within these traditions as raising important questions on race, class, and ethnicity (Close 2018: 870). On the one hand, the actual term ‘yarn bombing’ seeks to align itself with painted forms of graffiti, which, as Myzelev (2015: 61; see also Ferrell 1993) argues, is ‘often read as related to certain class and race’, or as Hahner and Vara (2014: 312) put it, ‘a criminal act largely performed by racially marked bodies’. As these scholars argue, the term appropriates particular cultures, classes, and races that have, in the context of urban graffiti, been marginalised, disadvantaged, and subject to official interventions. Furthermore, the adopting of a ‘subversive’ tone in terms of the framing of yarn bombing is also deemed problematic.

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For example, in their guide to yarn bombing, Moore and Prain (2009: 122–123) advise yarn bombers to employ the ‘tactics of military snipers’ lest they attract the attention of police or security officials (Moore and Prain 2009: 122–123). While this might have been intended to present as an amusing proposal, it also minimises the very real risks that urban graffiti artists have faced from officials, particularly during the 1980s and 1990s. While the practice benefits from its association with urban graffiti, as Myzelev (2015) notes, at the very same time it also seeks to disassociate itself from many of these same characterisations. This disassociation can be seen through the very ‘middle-class’ Myzelev (2015: 61), ‘suburban whiteness’ (Hahner and Varda 2014: 312) of the practice that constructs yarn bombing as a more acceptable form of graffiti because it ‘is removable and does not damage property’ (Moore and Prain 2009: 122). As Hahner and Varda (2014: 312) put it: …through an explicit appropriation of paint graffiti’s tagging culture, champions of yarn bombing actively participate in a racialized logic of exceptionalism that shares much with the phenomenon of “hipster racism.” In this way, the discourses and practices of yarn bombing enunciate its significance by simultaneously demeaning and appropriating another form of public art.

According to Close (2018: 879), there is a ‘blindness to ethnic privilege’ in the movement. While the act is paralleled with these urban forms of street graffiti, those who practice yarn bombing are unlikely to face the same official reactions or criminal sanctions, not to mention the other disadvantages often faced by minority cultures, that graffiti artists of the 1980s and 1990s did, and continue to face in contemporary times. Interestingly, these criticisms reflect broader conversations that have been initiated in the crafting community in recent times. In 2019, for example, a blog post by a high profile knitter caused controversy and sparked a dialogue about white privilege in the knitting community, with a number of knitters of colour coming forward to draw attention to their experiences of racism in the community (Saxena 2019; Most 2019; Taylor 2019). That yarn bombing has sought to capitalise on an association with traditional graffiti in an effort to be ‘cool’ and ‘edgy’, yet at the same time does not carry the same risks (in terms of official reactions) and realities (in terms of race and class) that others have faced, and continue to face, is emblematic of the same questions that knitters of colour

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have raised about the craft community more broadly. Consequently, any exploration of the act of yarn bombing, particularly one which situates it within a broader history of craftivist practice, must consider such concerns, in addition to the aforementioned gender dynamics that have been more typical in critical analyses to date.

Understanding Yarn Bombers and Their Motivations As the preceding section has highlighted, yarn bombing not only has a somewhat contested origin story, but it has also faced a number of criticisms. For many practitioners of yarn bombing, however, such critiques are unlikely to have been heard outside the academic sphere as the term and its practice endure in the craft community. With hundreds of stories about yarn bombing littering media platforms over the last half dozen years or so, and an increasing number of texts, guides, and patterns being published that encourage and provide assistance to crafters on yarn bombing, the practice appears to have firmly cemented itself in contemporary craftivist practice, and positioned itself as a ‘fun’ yet ‘subversive’ way for crafters to take their knitting and crochet into the community. In the opening pages of their book on the art of yarn bombing, American crafters, Mandy Moore and Leanne Prain, provide a list of reasons why someone might be attracted to taking up yarn bombing: • It’s fun. • It’s portable. • It provides opportunities for self expression. • It challenges social conventions. • It allows you to use knitting and crochet work for a purpose other than garment creation (“taking back the knit”). • It challenges preconceptions about what the craft can do. • Small projects are low pressure and don’t require a lot of time or money. • The appeal of making something that requires little planning is undeniable. • It’s a fun way to experiment with new fibers, stitch patterns, and techniques. • It inspires joy and surprise, both in yourself and others (Moore and Prain 2009: 20).

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In the sections that follow, I outline the key themes that emerged from my analysis of interviews with yarn bombers about their reasons, intentions, and motivations for yarn bombing. Moving through the personal, community, and political logics that underlie their actions, I demonstrate how yarn bombers are driven by both internal and external factors, hoping to not only bring joy and happiness to themselves and others, but also to raise awareness for issues, reclaim public space, and protest against a range of social and political issues close to their hearts. Making People Smile, Generating Joy, and Beautification With few exceptions, yarn bombers I interviewed were motivated to yarn bomb because it was a source of joy and happiness, both for themselves and for others. Wanting to have a positive effect on others, yarn bombers took great pleasure and delight in the responses and reactions to their handiwork, ultimately expressing a desire to make people smile and enjoy their day a little more. As one interviewee stated: …my message is just happiness. That’s why I work with bright colours and I put it [yarn bombs] up where people congregate. And I do like to go and spy on people’s reactions. When you see the kids and the smiles on the faces it’s just beautiful and I do it for that reason. – (Interviewee 14)

As another interviewee explained, they wanted an encounter with a yarn bomb to be a pleasurable experience: I like to make things that will make people smile, or feel like it is fun or amusing, or even just make them notice the beauty of a tree instead of just walking by without noticing the tree… I also want to make people smile during the drudgery of their day. – (Interviewee 2)

This notion of pleasure evokes the idea of the performance, display and consumption of pleasure that Presdee (2000: 7) wrote of in his work on the carnival of crime, as I discuss further in Chapter 4. For many yarn bombers, there was therapeutic value in both the creation of a yarn bomb, as well as seeing one in public. One interviewee, for example, was inspired to install a yarn bomb in their local area following a series of tragic events that had left the town in shock. As they noted, they believed that their yarn bombs might be a small but powerful symbol of hope during an otherwise sad time:

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…[We thought] we’re going to get through all of this, and even if it’s the littlest things you see, a little flower tied around a light standard we’re going to be okay, and I think that’s how we look at it. We need to do something to bring people smiling, to bring joy back to an otherwise ordinary day’. – (Interviewee 12)

For these interviewees, it was empowering to be able to provide a happy moment for someone else, while also personally benefitting from the therapeutic nature of the practice: …I’m all about craft as therapy, let’s make this world a better place any way we can. I don’t care how small or how tiny it is. And some people might think it’s [yarn bombing] a very strange thing to do, go for it, but I guess in the context of my life, being so limited physically, I still want to be able to contribute and do something. So, while I’m hopefully helping me by being crafty and keeping myself busy, I’m also hopefully making someone else smile and that’s the point. – (Interviewee 15) It just feels damn therapeutic to break through the walls of civilized decency and make your statement on the world… Overall, I think it’s a wonderful way to address that feeling of powerlessness or being lost or invisible in one’s own world. – (Interviewee 13)

Indeed, as Interviewee 13 went on to explain, the process of creating yarn bombs was meditative and healing: I liked the solitary meditative work of it [knitting and yarn bombing]… I don’t need or want any personal recognition but having this process of inner turmoil, helplessness, creativity, empowerment, and bold feistiness is healing. – (Interviewee 13)

And for others, being able to ‘do something different’ (Interviewee 6) with their knitting and crochet was also part of the appeal: I’d been crocheting for a long time. I started out making hats and scarves for friends. So, yeah, yarn bombing was kind of just an extension of that. It was just kind of a different way of using crochet. – (Interviewee 4) …one day while we were in Newtown, I saw some yarn bombs. And I just turned the corner and there were a series of yarn bombs and I think I laughed out loud with sheer delight!… And when I started crocheting, I thought ‘I could do that. Surely I could do that’. – (Interviewee 15)

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In addition to bringing joy and happiness into people’s lives, yarn bombers were also particularly motivated by a desire to beautify urban landscapes. Like Sayeg’s original yarn bomb, many yarn bombers felt that sterile urban environments needed brightening up, making these spaces more enjoyable for members of the public. As Interviewees 3 and 7 explained: I like to hide the ugliness with something beautiful… I mainly do it to beautify an area, especially if there is a lot of graffiti, I like to show that not all “tagging” is bad. – (Interviewee 3) Most of my yarn bombs are about beautification or just adding a little bit of colour to a space. – (Interviewee 7)

The dichotomising of graffiti and yarn bombing in the first quote is something that will be explored in more detail in Chapter 4, however, on yarn bomber’s efforts to beautify public space, there is a sense here that yarn bombers may be trying to resist or transcend the mundane, modern rationality that Lyng (2005: 5–6) writes of in reference to edgework. While there may be some question over whether yarn bombing can be classified as the kind of risky activity that Lyng theorises in his analysis of edgework, something also explored further in Chapter 4, I would argue that, at the very least, it can in part be seen as a ‘response to the overdetermined character of modern society’ (Lyng 2005: 5); that is, yarn bombing ‘serves as a vehicle of escape’, and is a rewarding experience that provides a ‘sensual immediacy’ or ‘moment of illicit pleasure and excitement’ for those who practice it (Lyng 2005: 5–6; Ferrell 1993: 172). It is carnivalesque in character (Presdee 2000). Much like Ferrell (1993) found in his research into graffiti writing then, yarn bombers are effectively indicating their tacit (and sometimes explicit) opposition to or rejection of the corporatised, bland, and unengaging nature of public space. Beyond this though, there is also an ‘affective’ quality (Young 2014). In yarn bombing these areas, interviewees are hoping to revive interest in their local area, add some colour, and empower people to enjoy their surroundings more: It sounds really lame, but I actually really like the area that I live in, and I kind of think of it as a way to do something a little bit cool for where I am…It is a beautification, like an art thing… – (Interviewee 11)

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Oh, it’s grey everywhere! There’s cement everywhere and bloody grey poles everywhere. Where is the colour people?! Where is the colour?! So, I’m mad [about] colour and I’m spreading my little message. I’m not doing it because I’m an anarchist or whatever… it’s all about the art and the colour… – (Interviewee 15) I like colour so it’s often anything that’s kind of grey or bleak, it gets colourfied. – (Interviewee 10)

These efforts to reignite interest in and add character to these landscapes, however, were not necessarily seen as insurgent by yarn bombers. Some interviewees were quick to point out that their works added to and enhanced these public spaces, fitting in with surroundings, rather than damaging or clashing with the spaces in which they were working: I love doing trees and poles. Adding little butterflies and flower vines to a tree or doing a metre or two of a pole; it’s bold and stands out for people to see. I tend to use bright colours, but take into account the surrounding area and use colours accordingly. – (Interviewee 3) …even though I was kind of leaving things in a public space, I wasn’t damaging anything and it was kind of adding to the space instead… – (Interviewee 4)

Interviewee 10 sums up their beautification approach succinctly: I’m not about protesting. I’m about making the world pretty. – (Interviewee 10)

When examined through the lens of the logics of craftivism then, we can see that many of the motivating factors outlined by interviewees here are demonstrative of not just personal logics, but also arguably community logics, with many yarn bombers motivated by a desire to create works for the benefit of others. As the next section will show, however, while some yarn bombers were reluctant to identify their beautification efforts as being driven by any particular agenda or political motive, others were more open about their overt efforts to resist the ‘constraints’ of public and private property, to borrow from Ferrell (1993: 172).

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Reclaiming and Softening of Public Space, Rejecting Commercialisation, and Building Communities In explaining their motivations for yarn bombing, there were a number of interviewees who openly acknowledged that their yarn bomb efforts were aligned with reclaiming and/or softening public space and challenging the ways in which public spaces had primarily become sites of commerce and consumption. The subversive or unauthorised nature of the act of yarn bombing was the very thing that inspired them to participate, as it allowed them to reclaim space for the community. As one interviewee explained: I guess it [yarn bombing] is kind of reclaiming public space for the public, particularly because I see things becoming more and more commercial and community space being lost. That area that I was talking about that inspired me, I mean, that’s a place where the community is taking back some of that communal space and actually using it for the community rather than it being taken over by large corporations… I think it is stating that we’re not just consumers, we’re citizens and we’re creative citizens and we have a right to do this. – (Interviewee 9)

Yarn bombing, thus, was seen as contributing positively to the community by giving them back these public spaces. As another interviewee put it: To me a lot of the power of those [yarn bomb] artworks if you like, is that they’re anonymous statements of humanity. They’re anonymous statements of humanity in an anonymous place of inhumanity – the city. – (Interviewee 5)

As we increasingly see the ‘hardening’ of the city—something that has been no more evident than in the way public spaces have been hardened against homeless populations (Petty 2016, 2017)—the yarn bomb becomes a quite literal attempt to ‘soften’ this environment (Davis 2010: 103). Interrogating the notion of yarn bombs as statements of humanity a little further, we can see that for some yarn bombers their installations were an attempt to ‘soften’, ‘warm up’, or ‘feminise’ public spaces, a theme that came up in a number of interviews and is demonstrative of the intersection of community and political logics. As yarn bombers explained, they often deliberately sought out spaces and objects for

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their installations that contrasted starkly with the soft, woolly yarns that ­comprised their yarn bombs: There’s a strong movement to do things in ugly areas because there is that thought that yarnbombing softens an ugly environment… – (Interviewee 14)

As these interviewees related, yarn bombing was a way for them to counteract the ‘cold’ and ‘exposed’ features of the urban environment: Traditionally, yes, it’s cold urban poles and seats and things like that [that I yarn bomb]. – (Interviewee 5) I’ve just walked by a place and thought oh… that tree needs a scarf or that pole’s looking a bit naked, yeah. – (Interviewee 9) In winter I put flowers on trees. – (Interviewee 6)

And for this interviewee, yarn bombing was a way of turning the uninspiring features that typify urban spaces into eye-catching sculptures: We have these great park benches that have curved arms, and when they’ve got the yarn on them it just looks really cool… So, it’s kind of like the things that you think wouldn’t be anything worth bombing [that we target], but when you put the yarn around, it’s really kind of cool. If it’s steel anything it just kind of turns into a sculpture. – (Interviewee 12)

In this way, yarn bombers saw their installations as a form of care work, in that taking their knitting into public spaces was a display or expression of care, for both the space itself and those who use that space: [Yarn bombing] is more feminine and I kind of think of it as … caring for public space and, through that, caring for the people in it. – (Interviewee 4)

This notion of care was often aligned with femininity or feminism. In articulating their yarn bombs as a form of feminine care, yarn bombers implicitly characterised the cold, hard, and unforgiving urban environments as masculine. As such, yarn bombing was a way of feminising spaces, making them more inviting, homely, and appreciated. As one interviewee explained about their yarn bombing:

78  A. McGOVERN Part of its feminist quality, and also its commentary on the built environment [is that] we are aiming to soften the edges, to critique that tendency, to undermine the harshness of the surroundings. – (Interviewee 1)

And much like the Knitting Nannas Against Gas have done with their craftivism, this yarn bomber used the imagery of grandmothers to speak of the way in which yarn bombing evokes a sense of affection, warmth and hospitality: I wanted to ‘warm up’ my neighbourhood because it was looking run down with many empty store fronts and truthfully, it was starting to smell like piss. I wanted little subtle things that would remind you of someone’s home or even your grandma and hope that behaviour would change. I think it sparked some neighbourhood pride and the place has gotten more cleaned up… I wanted to make a statement that this neighbourhood was loved and home. – (Interviewee 13)

In their unique way then, yarn bombers are attempting to alter these urban environments and the experiences people have within them. By ‘reappropriating’ or reclaiming public space through the installation of their creations, not only are yarn bombers trying to (re)build their communities, but they are deploying what De Certeau (1998: xiv) terms ‘tactics of resistance’,5 whereby they are engaged in a practice of subverting ‘the structure of “culture” in order to make it their own’ (Newmeyer 2008: 437). Or, to quote Leveratto (2015: 6), they are using ‘everyday practices aimed at reclaiming public spaces through techniques of socio-cultural production’. They are literally and figuratively being ‘crafty’. As a number of scholars have pointed out, De Certeau’s concept of ‘craftiness’ has two important meanings here: ‘the creative resourcefulness of crafts (style, material, structure) but also… the cunning, resistant potential of crafts and crafting’ (Newmeyer 2008: 440; see also Bratich and Brush 2011: 252). In disrupting the way in which citizens ‘passively follow the authorised representations of space placed upon them’ through colourful knit and crochet installations, yarn bombers 5 De Certeau drew his ideas from military discourse, which is interesting given that yarn bombers have similarly used military terminology to characterise the act, both in how it’s described (e.g. guerrilla knitting) and in the strategies that yarn bombers are encouraged to deploy in carrying out their installations (see Moore and Prain 2009).

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are attempting to transform the space from its ‘routines of consumption and production’ (Marr 2015: 6), while at the same time creating a ‘sense of mutual belonging’, or a ‘re-signification’ as Lefebvre might call it (Leveratto 2015: 6; see also Lefebvre 1996). In urban environs that have been commercialised, privatised, stripped of personality and colour, yarn bombing can be seen as an activity that challenges attempts at controlling these spaces and their intended use, enacting community and political logics. At the same time, however, as Creswell puts it, the ‘tools of the weak are those which already exist as strategies of the strong’ (Cresswell 1994: 56). That is, not only may the act of yarn bombing be allowed, or at the very least tolerated, ‘because it is essentially harmless’, as Cresswell found with some of the more ‘carnivalesque’ activities of the women at Greenham Common (Cresswell 1994: 55), but the institutional ‘strategies’ of the powerful can often be employed to essentially embrace this re-signification. In this case, yarn bombing becomes an activity accepted by the local governments and corporate entities that have previously been targeted by installations. In essence then, yarn bombers efforts to reclaim these spaces are inverted by the acceptance and appropriation of these practices by those against whom they were originally targetted. The acceptance of yarn bombing by councils and corporate entities is development that concerned a number of yarn bombers I interviewed, who saw their work as a statement against capitalism and commercialisation. As one interviewee explained: I’m slightly worried that the capitalist mechanism will jump right on it, like anything that is seen as slightly ‘cool’. Some companies have already used it for advertising… and that could take the fun out of it, real quick. – (Interviewee 1)

Another indicated: The day an advertising group uses it [yarn bombing] as a viral marketing, I will cry. – (Interviewee 10)

One interviewee was even concerned that by spruiking themselves on their yarn bombs, often in the form of tags attached to installations, yarn bombers were engaging in a practice that was antithetical to the spirit of yarn bombing:

80  A. McGOVERN They’ve put business cards on it. Heaps of them. I saw one in Lygon St the other day – the business card was bigger than the piece. I thought that’s ridiculous, defeats the purpose. – (Interviewee 5)

Others, however, were more pragmatic about the commercialisation of yarn bombing. For these yarn bombers, accepting commissions was not necessarily a signal that yarn bombing had been commodified. Rather, they argued, it allowed them to make money that would fund their independent, unauthorised projects. As one yarn bomber explained: My hope is that I get to continue developing my ideas and make them. Now it’s not going to be able to come out of my pocket so if I can get a commission here or there, or if people are happy for me to donate the money for me to make these things, then that’s what I hope to do. If I can keep, you know, pushing this well, subtly, these messages of love and kindness and let’s be thoughtful and not judge each other. That’s my purpose in life therefore I have no problem accepting money for an art project, bring it on! I’d like to do the Opera House sails. – (Interviewee 15)

So, like other forms of street art, the yarn bombing community has had to face the ‘mainstreaming’ of its product, as local councils, private companies, and event organisers approach yarn bombers to create installations, essentially sanctioning and commercialising this originally subversive form of street craft. As Presdee (2000: 30) writes, ‘carnival itself becomes ‘festivalised’ and appropriated as commodity and separated from the context of popular protest’. Raising Awareness, Memorialisation, and Promoting Communities In addition to using yarn bombing to beautify an area, ‘soften’ public space, and increase peoples’ enjoyment and use of that space, yarn bombers were also often motivated to yarn bomb as a way to raise awareness of, highlight, or pay tribute to particular issues or communities. One interviewee, for example, related how they had installed a creation as a message of love to their community, in the middle of a political protest: I made a yarn bomb and I put the hearts on it for love of community and all that stuff … so while people were marching and yelling and chanting

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and everything, well, I sewed up a yarn bomb. And while I was doing that I was thinking, I love this community, please try and find ground to talk or heal or, I dunno, I just sort of like spreading, trying to spread some love, and I just thought that while I was doing it, and I just kept sewing and sort of I felt quite exhausted afterwards but… you know maybe it’s a completely useless gesture but hopefully it may help someone. And it was very strange doing this in the middle of so many police and protesters, I mean I didn’t feel threatening in any way, I just concentrated on what I was doing. But yeah, that yeah, it was very interesting experiment, or experience…. Like for me, it wasn’t a protest, it was a gift of love maybe. Like it was a gift to the community to say look you’re all hurting, and this is hard, and I can’t do anything much to help but this is what I can do so I’m doing it. – (Interviewee 15)

Reflecting on their next project, another interviewee explained that they wanted to do something that would have a social impact: I think I’m looking for the next thing. I don’t know what it’ll be… something that is harder. Something that will make more of an impact… A social impact… – (Interviewee 14)

This reflection came after the interviewee explained another project they had been involved in, which was aimed at raising awareness and contributing to the conversation around same-sex marriage: One thing we did do for the Wattle Day6 one was we made up our own hashtag ‘wattle it take’ which was more to do with the marriage equality [debate] … we did some posters on poles with the hashtag, asking people just so we could, you know, check the reactions… – (Interviewee 14)

Using yarn bombs as a way to highlight particular social or community issues was fairly common among interviewees. For example, one interviewee was inspired to yarn bomb in memory of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, in New York. As they related: 6 Wattle Day, symbolised by the wattle tree and which has occurred on 1 September each year since 1992, is an Australian celebration that has been linked to a whole host of causes, including ‘patriotism, a reminder of home for those fighting wars overseas and to fundraising for community causes’ (Wattle Day Association Inc., n.d.).

82  A. McGOVERN I did make piece for 9/11 and a piece that was probably about four feet long and about, I don’t know, two feet high. And I put it up on a park bench where I knew they were going to be doing a memorial service that day, and so I made that piece and it has the Twin Towers like in a shadow and the American flag stitched into it, and I put that piece up and I was really attached to that piece. It’s probably the piece I was most attached to. And it took quite a bit of time and I worked, like, feverishly like through the whole entire weekend to try to get this piece done because it just, kind of, came to me that I wanted to do this. – (Interviewee 7)

Another interviewee spoke of creating pieces to show respect towards local Indigenous communities and their culture: …some of my Indigenous themed yarn bombs are to show respect for an area that is now my home… I do pieces that honour something, and I mean, I don’t just mean Australia, I mean the actual land, the rocks, the country, the material on which we live, and the oceans, and then I usually include one that’s about people. So, I always have one that’s about let’s live in harmony with all the different cultures and colours. – (Interviewee 15)

This sentiment was echoed by Interviewee 13, who saw their yarn bombing as a celebration of diversity and inclusion: …my neighbourhood is very diverse, and the local businesses reflect that. I love the delicious variety we have, and I wanted to unify this with my yarn bombing, if only on a metaphysical level. – (Interviewee 13)

And as this interviewee explained, yarn bombs could bring together a community at times of grief: To be able to display your passion with the public. It can be emotional, for example we did a tribute piece for a footy star who recently passed away, it was very emotional. – (Interviewee 3)

As these quotes highlight, for some yarn bombers, their practice gives them an avenue through which to commemorate and celebrate issues of importance in their communities. Like cultural criminologist Jeff Ferrell (2004: 252) found in his work on roadside memorials for car crash victims, one could argue that the creation of commemorative yarn bombs such as those described above creates ‘a new sort of cultural space’, remaking the location and its immediate surroundings as a memorial to

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‘a life lost, salvaging something of the sacred’ from the tragic event that took place there, and which has a broader resonance with the community affected by the tragedy (see also Fishwick and McGovern 2019). In honouring the victims of 9/11, a local sporting figure, or even a whole community, these public shrines challenge those who witness them to confront the issues that the yarn bombs highlight, whether that be about creating harmony, finding peace, or remembering those lost, drawing together community and political logics. Similarly, these pieces might activate a dialogue about respect, inclusion, and diversity, highlighting and adding to the cultural space that already exists for communities, and encouraging others to be part of it. Making a Statement, Protest, and Championing Change For a number of many interviewees, yarn bombing gave them the opportunity to engage with the public in a non-threatening and non-aggressive way to share a message, make a statement, or protest against an issue. By subtly communicating their political logics through their yarn bombs, some interviewees felt that they were more likely to reach people who may not ordinarily engage with particular ideas: I just … put little wrappings around tree branches now and then, and the purpose of that for me is … just to … jolt people out of their, I don’t know, normal thought processes when they’re walking past. – (Interviewee 4) As my mother always used to say to me, people will hear the first three words or five words and after that they hear nothing. Well, you don’t have to listen with your ears with yarn bombing. – (Interviewee 15)

As Interviewee 9 put it: I don’t know if I want to punch anyone in the face with it, I just kind of want to prod them with my knitting needles. – (Interviewee 9)

Whether yarn bombing was a political act itself, however, was something that interviewees were divided on. As discussed in the opening chapters of the book, the degree to which craft can be political is much debated, and it seems that with yarn bombers too, there is no consensus about whether yarn bombing itself is inherently political. When asked about the degree to which their yarn bombing was influenced by wanting

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to make a political statement about something, or protest an issue, some interviewees saw that yarn bombing was, or could be, a political act: I think for some it can be a direct form of activism, so it’s really no different to any other form of public protest except the vehicle, which is knitting, is a bit different. – (Interviewee 9) I think definitely there’s political motivation to it, both promoting kind of a craft way of living – like a kind of anti-consumer way of living – and also, I think I would include some overt political messages in future work. – (Interviewee 4)

Others, however, were uncertain whether they wanted to be political with their yarn bombing: I’m not a person that’s too vocal about my political opinions. I mean, I definitely have my opinions but, you know, in public spaces I haven’t been too vocal about it but I never say never though because maybe there might be something that really, you know, hits a hot button with me and then, you know, maybe I want to go out and yarn bomb to make a statement about that. – (Interviewee 7)

As another explained: I try and keep my politics out of my yarn bombing, and I approach that in other ways like letter writing and petitions or talking about it to other friends or whatever… So not that it doesn’t probably cross over but that’s not my thing. – (Interviewee 15)

For one interviewee, though, political logics could not be separated from the act: We’re yarn bombing. How is that not political? … for me public art and something that I guess you define as street art has got a lot of potential to make statements about things and draw attention in a different way to the ways we’re used to having that sort of stuff addressed, if you think about it and [are] doing it conscious of the context and the environment and your audience. – (Interviewee 5)

Reflecting on Greer’s definition of craftivism discussed in Chapter 2, it could be argued that, whatever the motive—personal, community, or

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political—acts of yarn bombing are inherently political. Whether about softening or beautifying a space, or boldly exhibiting a knitted banner calling for politicians to take an issue more seriously, yarn bombers are engaged in craftivism, from the level of trying to make other people happy, through to wanting to show their displeasure at a social injustices. Indeed, some interviewees were explicit about the political motivations that informed their yarn bombing activities, acknowledging that their projects were often inspired by concerns on particular social issues, or a wish to see something change politically. One interviewee, for example, used yarn bombing to draw attention to environmental concerns by connecting their yarn bombs to a campaign by 350.org7: My big yarn bombing project was part of – not only a part of – it was my contribution to the 350.org campaign in 2009. So, I crocheted 60 patches and put 350 on them and then did a big spree of hanging them up all over Brisbane… I remember thinking that this was a cause I really believed in and so I was really happy with promoting that. – (Interviewee 4)

Another interviewee’s environmentally focused yarn bombing sought to highlight the brutality of whale and dolphin hunting: [Our next project is in support of Waves of Action whose]… primary goal is to take the movie, The Cove,8 into schools and other sort of film festival environments… One of the guys who filmed us [for the documentary]… came up with idea, along with my wife, of knitting stuffed sea creatures: star fish, anemone, sharks, dolphins… And trying to get maybe 30 or 40 of these sea creatures and some tall ladders and hang them from the trees all around the farmers’ market with little tags asking people to get involved with Waves of Action, to either donate or volunteer their time… I think, without trying to be do-gooders we’d like to do something that leads to something good happening… – (Interviewee 8)

And this interviewee had investigated being more environmentally friendly in their yarn bombing by reusing plastic bags to create their works: 7 350.org describes itself as ‘an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all’ (350.org, n.d.). 8 The Cove is a 2009 Academy Award winning documentary about the dolphin drive hunting season in Japan, where dolphins and whales are captured and slaughtered for their meat (Oceanic Preservation Society 2019).

86  A. McGOVERN I’ve toyed with the idea of doing very large projects out of things like plastic bags. Plarn9 I think they call it. You know, something that’s an environmental statement or something like that because I’ve got so many of the damn things, I should make something out of those. – (Interviewee 5)

Other interviewees spoke about gradually moving towards politically inspired yarn bomb projects in support of social causes. For example, Interviewee 14 had recently begun to explore political issues with their work: I met two artists last year that piqued my interest completely, because I was strictly sort of knitting and bombing and it got me into this other side of things, looking at it from more of a political perspective. – (Interviewee 14)

This led Interviewee 14 to contribute to a number of projects aimed at making a statement on political issues, such as marriage and gender equality: I have done a number of rainbow-flag pieces for marriage equality… I do marriage equality poles, [which are] some of my favourites… I tend to do things near my favourite cafes and that because I know that […] people congregate there, they see it. At the moment I’ve got some stripes down there, suffragette colours on one side, so I’ve got gender equality and marriage equality… With the suffragette one I had to do a lot of education and I did a couple of those and on one I actually put photos of my favourite feminist authors. That was up for International Women’s Day. – (Interviewee 14)

Another interviewee wanted to address the issue of sexual violence against women from a feminist standpoint in their creations: Some of the things that I wanted to do are very much feminist stuff as well. I know there’s a group of felters who make felt cervixes … And I actually wanted to do that as a campaign against sexual violence. Because if you think about the amount of people who draw penises, and nobody blinks an eyelid. But a nice little knitted vagina … – (Interviewee 9)

9 Short

for plastic yarn.

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While other interviewees did not explicitly articulate political motivations in their yarn bombs, they did talk about wanting to raise public consciousness about a range of issues through their installations which, according to the logics of craftivism, could very well be considered broadly political in scope. For example, Interviewee 15 had used yarn bombing to raise awareness of invisible illnesses, inviting people to contribute pieces to a yarn bombing project focusing on Fibromyalgia Syndrome. As they explained: …this is one way that I could raise awareness. I raised a lot more awareness by getting people to be involved in my [yarn bombing] project and send me flowers in purple which is the colour of it [Fibromyalgia Syndrome awareness], than I ever would, putting one up. So, by having people being involved, they’d go “oh I didn’t know about that” or “oh my aunty has that” … So this has been good because…a lot of people who were ­isolated, and didn’t know anyone else who had either a chronic illness, invisible illness or fibro, or any of these things… so there’s this sense of community that you build not just for yourself but for other people. – (Interviewee 15)

Another interviewee spoke about yarn bombing to raise awareness of breast cancer: We’re planning to do one for the run for the cure for breast cancer in the end of August. So, in the city the run route where we’re going to do a pink kind of thing, whether it’s a pink cosy around the school or something like that. – (Interviewee 12)

And Interviewee 8 related a story of a woman who used her yarn bombs to highlight the dangers of smoking: There was a woman who was doing [yarn bombs on] telephone poles in Winston, Salem, North Carolina, to look like cigarettes but was putting skull and crossbones above the filter portion [of the cigarette] with this sort of message. And Winston, Salem in North Carolina is a huge tobacco city. It’s where most of the major cigarette companies have tobacco processing and cigarette rolling factories. So, this was sort of her attempt to point out to these tobacco companies, ‘Hey, you’re killing people’. – (Interviewee 8)

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As this chapter has highlighted, those who yarn bomb do so for many and varied reasons, whether to bring a smile to someone’s face, or to make people sit up and pay attention to a particular social issue. When these motivations are examined in relation to the logics of craftivism, as outlined in Chapter 2, it is clear to see that even for every day yarn bombers, personal, community, and political logics are core to their motivations. Like Young (2014: 26), found in interviews with street artists, the motives that drive yarn bombers are inherently political, or ‘craftivist’, as I refer to it. These political or craftivist motives can be ‘positive’, as Young (2014: 28) describes it; bringing joy and happiness to the lives of others, beautifying a neighbourhood, or generating therapeutic benefits for both the yarn bomber and the audience. By ‘making a gift of the artwork to the spectator’ yarn bombers are implicitly engaged in a political act (Young 2014: 27). These acts can also be politically ‘critical or oppositional’ (Young 2014: 28); reclaiming public space for the public, making a statement on a social issue, or championing change. So while not always recognised as such by yarn bombers themselves, the logics of craftivism explain each of these motivating factors, and support the craftivist nature of yarn bombing practices.

References 350.org. (n.d.). About. 350.org. Available at: https://350.org/about/. Another Vacant Space. (2013). David Medalla: ‘A Stitch in Time’. Available at: http://www.anothervacantspace.com/David-Medalla-A-Stitch-in-Time. Bratich, J., & Brush, H. (2011). Fabricating Activism: Craft-Work, Popular Culture, Gender. Utopian Studies, 22(2), 233–260. Carpenter, E. (2010). Activities Tendencies in Craft. Concept Store #3 Art, Activism and Recuperation. Available at: http://research.gold.ac.uk/3109/ 1/Activist_Tendencies_in_Craft_EC.pdf. Close, S. (2018). Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race. International Journal of Communication, 12, 867–889. Costa, M. (2010). The Graffiti Knitting Epidemic. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/10/graffiti-knitting. Cresswell, T. (1994). Putting Women in Their Place: The Carnival at Greenham Common. Antipode, 26(1), 35–58. Daily Mail. (2014). ‘Yarn Bombing’ Artist Wanted by Mexican Authorities for Damaging Underwater Habitat with Crocheted Covers. Daily Mail. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2726851/Artist-accused-damagingenvironment-Mexico.html#ixzz5DrGP7aGF.

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Daly Goggin, M. (2013). Knitting Social Identity: Yarn Graffiti in Transnational Craftivist Protests. HyperCultura: A Biannual Journal of Literacy Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1, 11–25. Daly Goggin, M. (2015). Joie de Fabriquer: The Rhetoricity of Yarn Bombing. Peitho Journal, 17(2), 145–171. Davis, M. (2010). Fortress L.A. In A. Orum & Z. Neal (Eds.), Common Ground? Readings and Reflections on Public Space (pp. 100–109). New York: Routledge. De Certeau, M. (1984/1998). The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California. Ferrell, F. (2004). Speed Kills. In J. Ferrell, K. Hayward, W. Morrison, & M. Presdee (Eds.), Cultural Criminology Unleashed. London: Glasshouse Press. Ferrell, J. (1993). Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Fishwick, E., & McGovern, A. (2019). Crafting, Crime, Harm and Justice in Australia. In H. Mandell (ed.), Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (pp. 263–277). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Google Trends. (2019). ‘Yarn Bombing’ Explore. Available at: https://trends. google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=yarn%20bombing. Greer, A. (2010). Magda Sayeg Is a Badass Yarn Bomber. Dumbo Feather (Issue 24). Available at: https://www.dumbofeather.com/conversations/ magda-sayeg-is-a-badass-yarn-bomber/. Hahner, L., & Varda, S. (2014). Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(4), 301–321. Ings, W. (2016). The Creative Guerrilla: Makers, Organisations and Belonging. In T. Pernecky (Ed.), Approaches and Methods in Event Studies. London: Routledge. Koh, G. (n.d.). Knitwork. Germaine Koh. Available at: http://www.germainekoh.com/ma/projects_detail.cfm?pg=projects&projectID=87. Kuittinen, R. (2015). Street Craft: Guerrilla Gardening/Yarnbombing/Light Graffiti/Street Sculpture/and More. London: Thames and Hudson. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writings on Cities (E. Kofman & E. Lebas, Trans.). Malden: Blackwell. Leveratto, J. (2015). Planning to be Reclaimed: Public Design Strategies for Spontaneous Practices of Spatial Appropriation. Street Art and Urban Creativity Scientific Journal, 1(1), 6–12. LuckyEwe. (2010). Yarn Bombing. Urban Dictionary. Available at: https:// www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=yarn%20bombing. Lyng, S. (2005). Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge.

90  A. McGOVERN Mandell, H. (2017). June 11 Is ‘Yarn Bombing Day’—And That’s a Problem. Forward. Available at: https://forward.com/opinion/spirituality/373619/ june-11-is-yarn-bombing-day-and-thats-a-problem/. Mann, J. (2015). Towards a Politics of Whimsy: Yarn Bombing the City. Area, 47(1), 65–72. Marr, A. (2015). “Beauty Is in the Street”: The Evolution of Graffiti Practices in Melbourne, Australia. M.A. Thesis, University of Otago, Dunedin. Moore, M., & Prain, L. (2009). Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. Most, B. (2019). Reckoning with Racism in the Knitting Community. Minnesota Daily. Available at: https://www.mndaily.com/article/2019/03/a-reckoningwith-racism-in-the-knitting-community. Myzelev, A. (2015). Creating Digital Materiality: Third-Wave Feminism, Public Art and Yarn Bombing. Material Culture, 47(1), 58–78. Newmeyer, T. (2008). Knit One, Stitch Two, Protest Three! Examining the Historical and Contemporary Politics of Crafting. Leisure/Loisir, 32(2), 437–460. Oceanic Preservation Society. (2019). Synopsis: The Cove. Oceanic Preservation Society. Available at: https://www.opsociety.org/our-work/films/the-cove/. Petty, J. (2016). The London Spikes Controversy: Homelessness, Urban Securitisation and the Question of ‘Hostile Architecture’. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(1), 67–81. Available at: https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/article/view/792/550. Petty, J. (2017). Ban on Sleeping Rough Does Nothing to Fix the Problems of Homelessness. The Conversation. Available at: http://theconversation. com/ban-on-sleeping-rough-does-nothing-to-fix-the-problems-of-homelessness-71630. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge. Saxena, J. (2019). The Knitting Community Is Reckoning with Racism. Vox. Available at: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2019/2/25/18234950/ knitting-racism-instagram-stories. Sayeg, M. (2015). Magda Sayeg, USA. In R. Kuittinen (Ed.), Street Craft: Guerrilla Gardening/Yarnbombing/Light Graffiti/Street Sculpture/and More. London: Thames and Hudson. Scheuing, R. (2010). Urban Textiles: From Yarn Bombing to Crochet Ivy Chains. In Textile Society of America Symposium Proceedings. Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/515a/3bbee16e20276859e93c86e36a447 8428a3e.pdf. Shrestova, S., & Jenkins, H. (2016). From Voice to Influence: An Introduction. Journal of Digital and Media Literacy, 4(1–2), 1–19.

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Taylor, A. (2019). ‘Sydney, We Have a Problem’: Racism Row Entangles Knitters. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/ national/nsw/sydney-we-have-a-problem-racism-row-entangles-knitters20190410-p51ct3.html. Thomas, E. (2014). Artist Olek’s Underwater Crochet ‘Bomb’ May Have Killed Marine Life. Huffpost. Available at: https://www.huffingtonpost.com. au/2014/08/20/olek-underwater-crochet-time-bomb_n_5692840.html. Wallace, J. (2012). Yarn Bombing, Knit Graffiti and Underground Brigades: A Study of Craftivism and Mobility. Mobilities. Available at: http://wi.mobilities.ca/yarn-bombingknit-graffiti-and-underground-brigades-astudy-of-craftivism-and-mobility/. Wattle Day Association Inc. (n.d.). Why Do We Celebrate National Wattle Day? Wattle Day Association Inc. Available at: http://www.wattleday.asn.au/ about-wattle-day/autralias-wattle-day-history-1st-september. Williams, K. A. (2011). “Old Time Mem’ry”: Contemporary Urban Craftivism and the Politics of Doing-It-Yourself in Postindustrial America. Utopian Studies, 22(2), 303–320. Wollan, M. (2011). Graffiti’s Cozy, Feminine Side. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn. html. Young, A. (2014). Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination. London: Routledge. Younger, E. (2014). Beatles Tribute: Huge Yarn Bombing Project Transforms HMAS Otway into Yellow Submarine. ABC News. Available at: https://www. abc.net.au/news/2014-06-12/submarine-yarn-bombing-project-unveiledin-holbrook/5518594.

CHAPTER 4

Craft Attack: The Framing of Yarn Bombing

Abstract  This chapter focuses on the ways in which yarn bombers ­construct, or frame, their practice. Starting with a consideration of the legal framing of yarn bombing, the chapter explores some of the reasons why yarn bombing may not attract the attention of law enforcement in the same way other forms of graffiti do, before considering what yarn bombers had to say about the (street) art/graffiti divide. Following this, the chapter looks more closely at how yarn bombers conceptualise the practice in relation to themes of deviancy, subversion, risk, thrill-seeking, and carnival. Keywords  Deviancy Graffiti and street art

· Subversion · Risk · Carnival · Legality · · Authoritarian aesthetic

In the previous chapter I outlined the motivations articulated by yarn bombers, demonstrating the ways in which these could be understood within the personal, community, and political logics of craftivism that were established in Chapter 2. In this chapter I dig a little deeper into the activities of yarn bombers, paying particular attention to the way in which they construct, or frame, their practice. Starting with a consideration of the legal framing of yarn bombing, I explore some of the reasons why yarn bombing does not appear to attract the same sort of official attention that graffiti and other forms of street art often do. In doing this I also reflect on how the media frames yarn bombing, as well as what © The Author(s) 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1_4

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yarn bombers say about the (street) art/graffiti divide. Following this, the chapter looks more closely at the ways in which yarn bombers conceptualise yarn bombing. Drawing particularly on themes of deviancy, subversion, risk, thrill-seeking, and carnival, I unpack the way that yarn bombers articulate the underlying frames that give meaning to their engagement with the practice.

Crime, Criminality, and Legal Framing of Yarn Bombing As detailed in Chapter 1, when I first started looking into the practice of yarn bombing, I was immediately drawn to questions of the legality of the act. While other forms of graffiti have been subject to strict criminal sanctions, it appeared that yarn bombing had not yet attracted the same sort of attention from policymakers or law enforcement officials. While recorded instances of arrests for yarn bombing are yet to materialise,1 as Millie (2019: 1) puts it, yarn bombing does have ‘the potential to come into conflict with civil and criminal law though issues of trespass and property ownership, criminal damage, littering, or other legislation on nuisance, incivility or anti-social behaviour’. Indeed, a quick scan of criminal codes in my local jurisdiction of NSW, Australia, demonstrates that if officials did want to respond to acts of yarn bombing, they certainly have some of the legislative frameworks to do so. For example, while in NSW a graffiti implement does not explicitly include knitting or crochet related implements, a strict reading of section 4 of the Graffiti Control Act 2008 (NSW) could lead one to surmise that the inability to easily remove knitting/crochet by wiping or with water or detergent is legally problematic: 1 While it does not appear that there have been any arrests, yarn bombers have certainly attracted the attention of law enforcement and local council officials, as I discuss further on in this chapter. A number have been asked to remove installations, but media reports of such interactions tend to suggest a sympathetic approach by officials. For example, in 2012 San Diego knitter ‘Bryan’ was asked by local officials to remove the 100 flower stem yarn bombs that he had attached to street signs around the city of Clairemont. City officials stated that there were ‘too many restrictions to overcome’ and that they ‘had looked through state law and local politics trying to find some way of allowing the flowers to remain in place’, but that this was not possible (Davis 2012). Bryan was given 10 days to ‘remove and preserve’ the creations and was encouraged to work with private businesses and individuals to ‘rehome’ his creations in locations that were not restricted by state and local laws (Davis 2012).

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[…] a person commits an offence in “circumstances of aggravation” if the person intentionally marks the premises or other property: by means of any graffiti implement, or in such a manner that the mark is not readily removable by wiping or by the use of water or detergent. (Graffiti Control Act 2008 NSW s. 4, emphasis added)

Similarly, under section 195 the Crimes Act (NSW), yarn bombing could even be considered a form of malicious damage, given the intent behind the act: Destroying or damaging property = (1) A person who intentionally or recklessly destroys or damages property belonging to another. (Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) s. 195)

And under environment protection legislation, yarn bombing might constitute a form of littering, given both its form and make-up: ‘litter’ includes: any solid or liquid domestic or commercial refuse, debris or rubbish including any glass, metal, cigarette butts, paper, fabric, wood, food, abandoned vehicles, abandoned vehicle parts, construction or demolition material, garden remnants and clippings, soil, sand or rocks, deposited in or on a place, whether or not it has any value when or after being deposited in or on the place and any other material, substance or thing deposited in or on a place if its size, shape, nature or volume makes the place where it has been deposited disorderly or detrimentally affects the proper use of that place. (Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW) s. 144A, emphasis added)

Furthermore, if placing installations on private (or even public) property without permission, yarn bombers can risk other legal repercussions. What is most curious about this then is why, if there are frameworks that give law enforcement officials the capacity to respond either criminally or civilly to acts of yarn bombing, does this not happen? I think there are a number of possible reasons for this: who is yarn bombing, how yarn bombers are perceived in the eyes of law enforcement officials

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and the public, and how the practice is positioned as a form of (street) art or graffiti. I will discuss each of these factors in turn. Framing Yarn Bombers: Destructive Criminals or Harmless Knitters? As a number of other scholars have argued, yarn bombing is primarily—although it should be noted, not exclusively2—a pursuit undertaken by and for white, middle-class women (Hahner and Varda 2014: 302, 305; Farinosi and Fortunati 2018: 158). As one of my interviewees commented when discussing the kind of projects that they undertake, ‘I’m very aware of the fact that you know I’m a boring white middle-class Australian’ (Interviewee 15). According to Hahner and Varda (2014), there is an exceptionalism to yarn bombing and those who carry it out that does not bear out in how other forms of street art and graffiti have been treated. As they relate, there are a number of recorded instances where yarn bombers are not only tolerated by law enforcement officials but actively encouraged in their pursuits (see also Wollan 2011). One example they highlight is a local community group being invited by Leicestershire Police, in the UK, ‘to adorn an underused area of Bede Park with pom-poms and other knitted handiworks to rectify misperceptions of the site as a crime hotspot’ (Hahner and Varda 2014: 301–302; see also BBC News 2013). Interviewees recounted similar experiences with legal figures. As one of my interviewees recounted: I have been stopped by a police officer as he thought I was spray painting, but when he saw I was yarn bombing, he asked for my card to give to the local community house to possibly teach youths about it. – (Interviewee 3)

In public imagery, too, yarn bombers are often characterised as either mysterious but harmless urban knitters, or friendly-faced nannas. A cursory scan over a random assortment of newspaper headlines about yarn bombing demonstrates some of the more typical media frames:

2 As Hahner and Varda (2014: 305) note, ‘not all yarn bombers are white, middle class women…Rather, the discourses and practices of yarn bombing suture the enterprise to the white womanly body as a discursive, yet material, figure’.

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Mystery yarn bomber dressing up Sydney spaces with crocheted gifts. (Zuill 2015) Highland Park yarn bombers hope knitting mischief elicits smiles. (Berkowitz 2016) Creative talent holds court with colourful crochet works. (Reid 2018) Goulburn ‘yarn bombing’ proves a hit. (Goulburn Post 2018) Yarn Bombers delight town visitors. (Woodhouse 2017)

While there is the odd media write-up that is critical of yarn bombing, raising questions about its legality or purpose, for the most part media narratives present yarn bombing as the whimsical, fun, and colourful hobby of kindly older women who just want to brighten up everyone’s day. And while yarn bombers are sometimes are on the receiving end of negative feedback about what it is they do, with some members of the public suggesting the practice is ‘a waste of time [and] a waste of yarn’ (Interviewee 15), for the most part interactions between yarn bombers and the public reflect the tone of the media. That is, people are interested, curious, and find the practice amusing or delightful. As Interviewee 15 explained: Normally people will come up and chat to you or ask you what you’re doing or tell you they like them and that’s really nice because in the beginning I just did it and I had no idea whether people liked them or hated them, and I just went well I’m just going to do it ‘cause I like doing it. But it is nice to know that people like them and it makes people smile. And that people write [to me] that they ‘were having a rough morning but I walked past and smiled’ and I think yay! – (Interviewee 15)

Even from afar, yarn bombers are able to get a feel for the public’s mood on their creations. As Interviewees 11 and 8 recounted: I was walking down the street, there was a little kid and the mother pointed out what I’d knitted on the tree to the little kid. [He] thought it was really cool and he was jumping up and down and dancing in front of it… – (Interviewee 11) …we saw one of the [yarn bombs] about a hundred feet away and there was an elderly couple looking at it. And the woman was sort of walking around it and had her hands on it and was looking and pulling on seams and really checking it out, inspecting it. And you could tell that she knew

98  A. McGOVERN something about knitting. And the husband was looking at it sort of holding his chin and walking around it and had the engineer’s view of … ‘how do you get it on there and how do you get it off and how does it work and how did they attach that sign’. – (Interviewee 8)

Online platforms, where many yarn bombers document their installations, are another forum through which yarn bombers can gain an insight into public sentiment about their creations. As Interviewee 14 recollected about a reaction to one of their installations: …the kids went berserk and on social media it just went off, which was fun. It’s just fun to track people’s comments and people would [reply] “oh I stopped children stealing your pom poms!” and we were like “no let them take them, we’ve got more” ‘cause we would go down there and replenish them. That was really cute. – (Interviewee 14)

These sorts of responses both from the public and media are not uncommon and are indicative of the way in which yarn bombing has been framed as relatively harmless; a source of curiosity and amusement, but certainly not a ‘scourge’ on society. Even in cases where there has been some form of official intervention or response to yarn bombers, the stakes are often low. In 2009, for example, members of the Knit the City yarn bombing crew were questioned by police and served with a stop-and-search notice for being ‘seen decorating a telephone box for a craft project’ in Parliament Square in London (The Telegraph 2012; see also Young 2014). Despite the order, the group were allowed to continue with the installation on the proviso that the yarn bomb was removed once photographed (The Telegraph 2012). Indeed, the interaction was not exactly an unpleasant one. As, Lauren O’Farrell, also known as Deadly Knitshade of the Knit the City crew, explained to The Guardian about the interaction: “The minute we said it was a craft project [to police], it was fine,” says O’Farrell. “They gave us a stop-and-search notice that said, ‘Seen decorating a telephone box on Parliament Square.’ Then one of the policemen took pictures of us on his phone for his wife.” (cited in Costa 2010)

As this quote suggests, police responses to yarn bombers when they are ‘caught in the act’ are not quite the same hard-line approach that we

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have often seen with other forms of street art and graffiti. For example, in the same year the Knit the City crew were stopped, an 18-year-old woman in NSW, Australia with no criminal record was sentenced to three months in prison for ‘writing with a black marker pen’ on the wall of a Sydney café (Alexander 2009). While the sentence was overturned on appeal, it does demonstrate the incongruity between responses to yarn bombing and other forms of graffiti/street art, something that a number of yarn bombers are also cognisant of in their framing of the practice. While some interviewees saw yarn bombing as a form of graffiti, the vast majority thought there was a clear distinction between yarn bombing—as an ephemeral act—and graffiti—as a destructive act. Such frames are evocative of Hahner and Varda’s (2014) criticisms of yarn bombing. As they argue (see also Chapter 3), ‘[y]arn artists, civic officials, and public admirers opine that yarn bombing is superior given that, unlike paint graffiti, it is more aesthetically pleasing, temporary, and beneficial’ (Hahner and Varda 2014: 302). This distinction was evident in interviews, with many interviewees quick to point out that yarn bombing was more akin to art because it more aesthetically appealing than other forms of graffiti: I mean, for us it’s yarn bombing as an art installation for the public to enjoy, that’s all we really think about. – (Interviewee 12) I think it’s similar to graffiti art, rather than just tagging… because it requires a skill so it’s not just about being subversive or tagging, it’s also the aesthetic as well. – (Interviewee 9)

And was also less damaging, a point raised by a significant number of interviewees as these quotes indicate: I see it as a form of street art, but not really as graffiti because I see graffiti as a more permanent kind of defacement which is difficult to remove. I see graffiti as benefitting only the person who put it there, but I see street art, as something that the public can enjoy, as well as the person who put it there. I see graffiti and street art as different products. – (Interviewee 2) I don’t believe it is like graffiti in the sense that it [graffiti] destroys things. Yarn bombing is more about brightening up an area and bringing a smile to people faces. The best thing is its easily removed, not permanent. – (Interviewee 3)

100  A. McGOVERN I think because it’s not destructive that it’s less likely to be seen as bad graffiti kind of thing. Whatever we do, it can be taken down. – (Interviewee 12) It differs from graffiti in that no harm is done to the property or item it covers. It is reversible/removable and leaves no trace or harm. – (Interviewee 13)

…it’s not permanent graffiti. I’m not defacing property. I’m not destroying property. I would never put up a yarn bomb on something that I think would destroy or kill whatever it’s on. Like, if it was a growing tree or something like that, I wouldn’t do that. – (Interviewee 7) So, people have a really negative view of graffiti and that kind of thing because it is someone’s property, it doesn’t matter how good it is, at the end of the day you have created damage. But this [yarn bombing] doesn’t have that aspect to it. – (Interviewee 11)

Furthermore, a number of interviewees went on to endorse yarn bombing’s status as a form of art because of its benefits to the community: I think me personally I see it as a form of art, of just expressing art and trying to do something pretty in an otherwise dark kind of world. – (Interviewee 12) … a lot of people call it a graffiti kind of thing and I get the defining it that way, but I don’t really see it as a graffiti so much, I think of it more like a community thing. – (Interviewee 11) I guess for me it is taking bits of knitting that I’ve done and bringing art into the public arena … so making art and craft accessible to the community. – (Interviewee 9)

Such responses are reflective of the ‘exceptional status’ given to yarn bombers, as suggested by Hahner and Varda (2014: 302). When we examine this in the way that yarn bombers align themselves with street art, rather than graffiti, we can see that while on the one hand there is a sense that yarn bombers revel in the subversive status of the practice, on the other, they invoke its exceptional status as an attractive form of art that benefits the community, is easily removable, non-destructive,

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and requires a particular level of skill (thus implying perhaps that some other forms of graffiti do not). Graffiti, as such, is framed as being damaging, harmful and destructive. Such narratives consequently frame yarn bombing as a ‘good’, ‘acceptable’ form of street art, rendering more traditional forms of urban graffiti as undesirable. As Young (2014) and Millie (2017, 2019) have both discussed in their work on street art, graffiti and more recently yarn bombing, the responses of officials, the media, and the general public is indicative of the power of the ‘aesthetic’. That is, as Millie (2019: 2) argues, there is an ‘intersection between sensory encounter and the regulation of taste’. If we combine this perspective with Hahner and Varda’s (2014) notion of exceptionalism, this raises some interesting questions about the criminalisation, or lack thereof, of yarn bombing and how and why some activities come to be labelled as criminal, while others are not. It is clear that there is a ‘legal disproportionality’ as it relates to yarn bombing from a criminological point of view (Hahner and Varda 2014: 313). Like Hahner and Varda (2014), I would argue that one of the reasons why yarn bombing as a practice, and yarn bombers themselves, are rarely, if ever, dealt with through criminal justice processes is exactly because of judgements that have been made about who they are and what they do. More specifically, they do not fit the image of a stereotypical ‘criminal’. My own research and that of others shows that yarn bombers are mostly viewed through a positive lens; they are almost the exact opposite of what someone might suggest is the profile of a typical ‘criminal’. As the quote at the beginning of this chapter from Interviewee 3 demonstrated, the optics of yarn bombing—the actual yarn bombs themselves, as well as those installing them—are such that they fail to interlock with ‘the political economy of criminality’ (Ferrell 1993: 170). That is, while the language and framing that yarn bombers attribute to the practice, as will be explored in the next section, embodies (or attempts to embody) notions of criminality, subversiveness, and deviancy, such frames rarely translate in reality. Those with the power to label such acts or individuals as criminal, for the most part, fail to do so.3 3 It is worth noting, however, that context is particularly important here. As discussed in a forthcoming publication (Fishwick and McGovern 2019), craftivist acts such as yarn bombing can be heavily policed and criminalised if and when it is deemed explicitly political or transgresses other laws. For example, ‘craftivists who engage in protest by

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One of the reasons why this is the case is because of the way various officials, such as those in law enforcement, local council, or state government, react and respond to the practice or, as Ferrell (1993: 180) puts it, how they apply their ‘authoritarian aesthetic’. While Ferrell (1993: 179) in his research on urban graffiti found that ‘figures of authority… draw on a submerged aesthetic agenda to make claims about the offensiveness of graffiti’s style’, almost the opposite is true when it comes to yarn bombing. That is, those in positions of power or authority, such as police, have deemed it an acceptable form of street art, indeed, so acceptable that yarn bombers are being invited and commissioned to undertake installations, as discussed in Chapter 3. Arguably a big part of the reason why this has occurred comes down to how law enforcement officials have revealed ‘their own sense of beauty, meaning, and power’ (Ferrell 1993: 179). Like Young (2014: 103) found in her research into graffiti and street artists, police exercise a great deal of discretion and, when applied to encounters with yarn bombers and through the lens of ‘authoritarian aesthetics’, such acts are more likely to be categorised as street art than graffiti and, subsequently, dealt with less punitively than perhaps they could be. As Young (2014: 100) explains, one of the reasons why discretion plays a big part in how acts such as yarn bombing are responded to is because of the ‘construction of street art as contiguous with graffiti’. So, while there may be equal enough cause (and power) for yarn bombing to be dealt with via the same criminal codes and sanctions that other forms of street art and graffiti are, as discussed earlier in this chapter, it is not. Rather, yarn bombing may be positioned discursively and legally alongside other forms of graffiti, it is interpreted by those with authority as different, not warranting the same sort of official reaction or criminal sanctioning that these parallel practices have been subject to. By virtue of the discretionary practices of police—and reified by positive or at least apathetic public and media sentiment—yarn bombers have been granted an ‘exceptional status’ (Hahner and Varda 2014).

attaching their work to machinery or across a gateway—as part of an environmental protest against mines or Coal Seam Gas exploration—or who simply sit and knit on land owned by the government, can now be subject to prosecution leading to imprisonment and heavy fines’ (Fishwick and McGovern 2019; see also Gotsis 2015; White and MacKenzie 2018; Environmental Defenders’ Office 2016).

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In this way aesthetic authority has been deployed to the extent that police, and others, use their discretion not to act against particular people in particular contexts. In the following section, I will explore this further as it relates to the ways in which yarn bombers themselves frame their practice.

How Yarn Bombers Frame Their Practice Interviews with yarn bombers themselves were revealing about how they framed the practice. By paying particular attention to the way in which yarn bombers reflect on themes of deviance and subversion, and thrill-seeking and edgework, this section considers the ways in which yarn bombers conceptualised what it is they do and the feelings and emotions that yarn bombing evokes. Deviance, Risk, and Subversion As highlighted in Chapter 3, one of the illustrative features of the yarn bombing movement is tendency for the practice to be described as a deviant, risky, or subversive. Such claims are particularly interesting given that, as discussed above, there appears to be little evidence to suggest that yarn bombers are risking serious legal repercussions for what they do. Indeed, it is this framing of yarn bombing as risky and subversive that exemplifies the very point raised in the previous section; that is, that there is a disconnect between the way in which the practice is framed and the exceptionalism that yarn bombers actually benefit from. In interviews, yarn bombers were asked whether they thought yarn bombing was deviant and/or subversive. On the deviancy of yarn bombing, one interviewee responded: Deviant? Yes, probably a bit, we do feel kind of sneaky and secretive about it, which is fun. – (Interviewee 2)

Another, when explaining how they had a response lined up if anyone intervened while they were yarn bombing, said: …if somebody asks us what we’re doing, we just say we’re doing an art installation and we know we’re got the words covered. It’s just fun, and we giggle at our so-called deviancy… – (Interviewee 12)

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That interviewees could laugh about or make fun of their supposed deviancy gets to the heart of Hahner and Varda’s (2014) arguments about the exceptionalism of the act. At the same time, there was clearly a fissure between yarn bombers’ attraction to the practice because of its deviancy, and the reality of there being any serious consequences for this. The idea that yarn bombers might attract the attention of police or security officers as they go about their business was something that Moore and Prain (2009: 116) wrote about in their guide to yarn bombing: Many beginning yarn bombers worry that they could be caught in the act of putting up a tag. They worry they will be seen, or worse, approached by a curious bystander, a security guard, or even a police officer. While a heightened sense of danger can add to the thrill that knit graffiti provides you, you never want to place yourself in harm’s way. Remember, safety always comes first – for you, members of your crew, and the public at large.

As a result of the subversive and risky narrative that has circulated about yarn bombing, many yarn bombers have reported planning their activities at times where they feel there is less chance of attracting unwanted attention from the public or authorities. For many though, while they initially considered the act risky, they soon came to realise the risks were minimal, and that the attention they did draw was far less negative than anticipated. As these interviewees explained: Initially I did [think it was risky] because my first foray into it [yarn bombing] was in my local town. I live in a country town, and word gets out about those sorts of things and there is a high chance of being seen by somebody… I don’t know what I was nervous of. I didn’t think the police were going to throw me in the back of the divvy van4 and cart me away, but I thought someone might stop and go, ‘Hang on a minute, what do you think you’re doing? Aren’t you a respectable member of society?’ – (Interviewee 5) I was frightened, because it was back when I very first began. I’d sneak out and I’d think you’d have to do it, it was guerilla knitting. But then I realised that it gives people so much pleasure and they really like meeting the person who does it. – (Interviewee 14) 4 ‘Divvy van’ is Australian slang for Divisional Van, a utility vehicle typically used by police that has a cage on the back for holding arrestees.

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Closely related to the risks discussed by yarn bombers was the idea that yarn bombing was ‘naughty’ or somehow subversive, a form of resistance and defiance. The term subversive is one that came up often in interviews and has become something of a catchcry in the popular narrative that has developed around yarn bombing. For one interviewee, subversiveness in yarn bombing manifest in a number of ways, from the juxtaposing of handicrafts and urban environs…: It is a subversive act of planting something beautiful and handmade in an unexpected context… I think of it as art installation, but it has a subversive characteristic to it. – (Interviewee 8)

… to the unanticipated nature of the yarn bomb…: …maybe it’s subversive insofar as you are subverting people’s expectations. – (Interviewee 8)

…as well as the low-risk rebellious qualities of the practice: … I always like when people question authority and sort of push the limits of things… sort of questioning what people’s expectations are and pushing those limits. I guess it’s subversive without being dangerous. That’s sort of how I look at it. It’s like entry-level subversion maybe. – (Interviewee 8)

For yarn bombers then, this notion of subversion can occur on a number of different levels. Yarn bombing may be subverting norms about handcrafts and how they should be performed and utilised; it may be about subverting ideals of the female homemaker; and it may even be about subverting the space in which activities such as yarn bombing occur. While on the surface this level of subversiveness, and the associated risks, may seem small, for many who practice it, yarn bombing is probably the riskiest thing they have ever engaged in. As this interviewee explained: [Yarn bombers are] attracted by the naughtiness of it and that’s interesting – the attraction that that has… it’s a safe way for women to be naughty because we’re not supposed to be naughty. I mean there’s so many parameters that we’ve got to work within about how we look and act and behave and everything that this is a way that we can be bad but not so bad with it. – (Interviewee 5)

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So, while subversiveness may not always be framed in terms of the legal subversiveness or criminality, it is clear that this term does resonate with yarn bombers in other ways. This framing of yarn bombing as subversive or rebellious is interesting given the historical context of craftivism that precedes this movement. One criticism often levelled at contemporary ‘subversive knitters’ is that their supposed subversiveness is not taken seriously. Rather, it is seen as a novelty, disconnected from its historical roots that were more strongly aligned with feminist principles and resistance efforts (Robertson 2011: 186). As Robertson (2011: 188–189) argues, ‘[k]nitting, in other words, is seen as a safe form of activism (if it is even activism at all), both for those practicing it and those covering it in the media’. Robertson’s assessment, then, begs the question: what counts as subversive? This very question has been taken up by Haywood and Schuilenburg (2014) in their discussion into defining resistance within the discipline of criminology. Arguing that ‘[r]ather than being theorized, different examples of subversive behaviour, youthful subcultural practices, and social movements are all-too-often simply lauded as forms or repertoires of resistance’, Hayward and Schuilenburg (2014: 22) urge criminologists to give greater consideration to how resistance, and consequently subversion, is understood and deployed by (cultural) criminologists. Significantly, they ask: … is there a danger that, by stressing creativity over and above other elements – say, for example, robust street-level protest and intervention – certain resistance activities might be reduced to simple acts of communication, empty cultural messages devoid of any real transformative potential? (Hayward and Schuilenburg 2014: 27)

Applying this critique to the practice of yarn bombing then, we might ask, how truly subversive are acts of yarn bombing? Does yarn bombing result in the kind of revolutionary, meaningful transformations that Hayward and Schuilenburg (2014: 29–33) suggest successful forms of resistance should? Arguably, perhaps it does not, if we are taking it that these revolutions are intense, instantaneous moments in time, rather than a slow, steady, chipping away of the status quo. Yet, how many subversive acts do result in radical change? According to Hayward and Schuilenburg’s (2014: 32–33) threestage process of resistance, yarn bombing could be considered ‘inventive’

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(Stage 1) and quickly ‘imitated’ (Stage 2) but is yet to have resulted in any politically ‘transformative’ outcomes (Stage 3). Thus, one might argue that yarn bombing is more symbolic than revolutionary. While the specific act of yarn bombing might fall short of these measures, it is worth considering the broader craftivist movement and its feminist past before dismissing the impact and influence such movements have on society. Thrill-Seeking, Edgework and the Carnival of Crime While the jury may still be out on the true subversiveness in the act of yarn bombing, it is evident that at least the appearance of subversiveness holds some meaning for those who engage in the practice, imbuing it with a sense of excitement and pleasure. As one interviewee explained: There is kind of thrill that you get from it, but again that’s subversive … I’m doing something naughty. – (Interviewee 9)

And for yarn bombers this thrill can be enhanced by the measures they often take to remain anonymous when carrying out installations: …the anonymous part of it I think was important and so when you’re sneaking around putting it up in secret, that’s kind of the buzz because you want to make sure no-one knows who did it, because for me that’s part of the payout for it. – (Interviewee 5)

As Presdee (2000: 30) puts it, ‘transgressing and doing wrong are for many an exciting and pleasurable experience’. This assessment is certainly true for the yarn bombers that I interviewed, as it also seems to be for members of the public who encounter yarn bombs, as discussed in Chapter 3. In their guidebook to yarn bombing authors Moore and Prain (2009) advise yarn bombers to carry out their installations in groups, wear dark clothing, and—as has already been mentioned—embody the tactics of military snipers. As well as providing prospective yarn bombers with knitting patterns to enable them to knit their own hoodie, ‘zukin’,5 gloves, and ‘tagging toolkit cuff’ (2009: 124–148), Moore and Prain also offer the following information on what to watch out for when yarn bombing: 5 The

Japanese word for balaclava (Oese-Lloyd cited in Moore and Prain 2009: 123)

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Watch out for: • Guard dogs • Car alarms • Private property • Telephone lines • Unsafe climbs • Private security systems • Perfectly manicured streets • Sprinklers • Electric fences • Patrol cars • Fresh paint or concrete • Flowerbeds or newly planted grass (Moore and Prain 2009: 118). And if yarn bombers get stopped by police, their advice includes: • Remain calm, take a deep breath if you need to • Take the time to answer any questions that the officer has and be honest • Explain to the officer that you are an artist and creating public art • Demonstrate that the work is removable and does not damage property • Do not use the word graffiti. ‘Art project’ has a much more subdued feeling to it (Moore and Prain 2009: 122–123). As flagged in the earlier part of Chapter 3, when discussing some of the criticisms of yarn bombing, I argue that what we are witnessing here is the performance of criminality; that is, these guidelines discursively frame yarn bombing as a deviant, potentially even criminal, activity. As such, it is wise for yarn bombers to take measures to avoid detection or arrest. At the same time, however, as has already been established in this chapter, the likelihood that yarn bombers are at risk of being arrested is quite low. In this way then, yarn bombing becomes more a matter of style or culture, than criminality. So, while yarn bombers may ‘delight in being deviant’ (Katz 1988: 312), ‘the performance of carnival becomes the performance of disorder’ (Presdee 2000: 21). Yarn bombers thus are engaged in the carnivalesque—there is colour, texture, excitement, pleasure, joy—but it is a ‘middle-class’ form

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of carnival, ‘commercialised’ and ‘appropriated’ (Presdee 2000: 37). So, while on the one hand yarn bombers may truly believe in the transgression of their work, whatever that particular form of transgression might be for them, on the other hand, it is a ‘partly licenced’ form of carnival (Presdee 2000: 46). This is no more evident than when acts such as yarn bombing are co-opted by corporations wanting to be ‘trendy’ by having their businesses yarn bombed, or local councils inviting yarn bombers to install themed yarn bombs in public spaces as a way to provide tourists with a ‘unique’ photo opportunity. Lyng’s (2005) work on the concept of edgework may go some way towards explaining how participants articulate yarn bombing as ‘risky’ and ‘naughty’, further enhanced by the legal ambiguities of yarn bombing. Even though many yarn bombers were quick to downplay the real risks of getting in trouble for acts of yarn bombing, for a number of interviewees it was clear that part of the attraction to yarn bombing was in the appearance of risk. As one interviewee related: …the criminal aspect some people play up more than others and there’s a lot of women I’ve worked with who were attracted to it for that reason. You could be good and a criminal. You’ve got the coolness of being a criminal, but you weren’t going to get into trouble, if that makes sense? – (Interviewee 5)

Like others have found in relation to paint graffiti (e.g. Ferrell 1993), there is a seductiveness that comes with yarn bombing, such that yarn bombers are excited by the opportunity to do something a little bit ‘risky’, something that transgresses (their) norms, and may or may not be criminal, depending on how those with the authority define and respond to it. Yarn bombing, therefore, is at the very least a performance of resistance, a nod to the carnivalesque, whether or not it actually results in any transformative end point. As this chapter has demonstrated, the way in which yarn bombing is framed by yarn bombers suggests that while the practice has all the hallmarks of being a deviant, subversive practice, the reality is that those in authority rarely respond to it as such. For scholar such as Hahner and Varda (2014), this is demonstrative of the exceptional status given to yarn bombing, such that it does not attract the same punitive response that acts of graffiti carried out by other people in other contexts may experience. As Young (2014), Millie (2017, 2019), and Ferrell (1993)

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have demonstrated in their own work, much of this exceptional status can be attributed to the aesthetic judgements made by those with authority—police, lawmakers, state and local government officials—to not respond with a criminal justice approach to these acts, except where the aesthetic goes beyond the bounds of what is considered acceptable. In the final chapter of the book, I draw together the various threads of the preceding chapters to revisit the five questions that guided this project. In doing so I consider how this research contributes to criminological considerations of yarn bombing specifically and contemporary craftivist movement more broadly. In doing so I reflect on what criminologists can take away from the study of craftivism, and how it opens up new questions about craftivism’s contribution to social, political, environmental, economic, and other concerns that characterise contemporary society.

References Alexander, H. (2009). Graffiti Girl Wins Appeal Against Jail. Sydney Morning Herald. Available at: https://www.smh.com.au/national/graffiti-girl-winsappeal-against-jail-20090304-8och.html. BBC News. (2013). Guerilla Knitting in Leicester ‘to Reduce Crime Fear’. BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leicestershire21659158. Berkowitz, K. (2016). Highland Park Yarn Bombers Hope Knitting Mischief Elicits Smiles. Highland Park News. Available at: https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/highland-park/ct-hpn-yarn-bombing-tl-0707-20160701story.html. Costa, M. (2010). The Graffiti Knitting Epidemic. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/oct/10/graffiti-knitting. Davis, K. (2012). Knitting Guy Given 10 Days to Remove Stop Sign Flowers. San Diego CityBeat. Available at: http://sdcitybeat.com/last-blog-earth-news/ knitting-guy-given-10-days-remove-stop-sign-flowers/. Environmental Defenders’ Office. (2016). Update on Protest Laws 2016. Available at: https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/edonsw/pages/2770/attachments/ original/1477878964/Protest_law_update.pdf?1477878964. Farinosi, M., & Fortunati, L. (2018). Knitting Feminist Politics: Exploring a Yarn-Bombing Performance in a Postdisaster City. Journal of Communication Inquiry, 42(2), 138–165. Ferrell, J. (1993). Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality. Boston: Northeastern University Press.

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Fishwick, E., & McGovern, A. (2019). Crafting, Crime, Harm and Justice in Australia. In Mandell, H. (Ed.), Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats (pp. 263–277). Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Gotsis, T. (2015). NSW Parliamentary Briefing Service (Protests and the Law in NSW Briefing Paper No 7/2015). Sydney: New South Wales Government. Goulburn Post. (2018). Goulburn ‘Yarn Bombing’ Proves a Hit. Goulburn Post. Available at: https://www.goulburnpost.com.au/story/5517805/ yarn-bombing-weaves-way-into-citys-heart/. Graffiti Control Act 2008 (NSW) s. 4. Available at: http://www8.austlii.edu.au/ cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/gca2008179/. Hahner, L., & Varda, S. (2014). Yarn Bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism. Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, 11(4), 301–321. Hayward, K., & Schuilenburg, M. (2014). To Resist  =  to Create? Some Thoughts on the Concept of Resistance in Cultural Criminology. Tijdschrift Over Cultuur & Criminaliteit, 4(1), 22–36. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. Lyng, S. (2005). Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge. Millie, A. (2017). Urban Interventionism as a Challenge to Aesthetic Order: Towards an Aesthetic Criminology. Crime, Media, Culture, 13(1), 3–20. Millie, A. (2019). Crimes of the Senses: Yarn Bombing and Aesthetic Criminology. British Journal of Criminology, Online First, 1–24. Moore, M., & Prain, L. (2009). Yarn Bombing: The Art of Crochet and Knit Graffiti. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press. Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) s. 195. Available at: http://www7.austlii.edu.au/ cgi-bin/viewdb/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/ca190082/. Protection of the Environment Operations Act 1997 (NSW) s. 144A. Available at: https://www.legislation.nsw.gov.au/#/view/act/1997/156. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge. Reid, K. (2018). Creative Talent Holds Course with Colourful Crochet Works. The West Australian. Available at: https://thewest.com.au/news/ kalgoorlie-miner/creative-talent-holds-court-with-colourful-crochet-worksng-b88977307z. Robertson, K. (2011). Rebellious Doilies and Subversive Stitches: Writing a Craftivist History. In M. E. Buszek (Ed.), Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (pp. 184–185). Durham: Duke University Press. The Telegraph. (2012). London’s Graffiti Knitters. The Telegraph. Available at: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/united-kingdom/ england/london/galleries/Londons-graffiti-knitters/ktc-phonebox-2/.

112  A. McGOVERN White, L., & MacKenzie, B. (2018). New Protest Legislation Labelled ‘A Fundamental Attack on Democracy’ Will Start in NSW on 1st July. ABC Online. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-26/ new-protest-regulations-labelled-attack-on-democracy/9905676. Wollan, M. (2011). Graffiti’s Cozy, Feminine Side. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/fashion/creating-graffiti-with-yarn. html. Woodhouse, K. (2017). Yarn Bombers Delight Town Visitors. Western Telegraph. Available at: https://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/news/15444201.yarnbombers-delight-town-visitors/. Young, A. (2014). Street Art, Public City: Law, Crime and the Urban Imagination. London: Routledge. Zuill, C. (2015). Mystery Yarn Bomber Dressing Up Sydney Spaces with Crocheted Gifts. The Daily Telegraph. Available at: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/inner-west/mystery-yarn-bomber-leaves-gifts-forsydney/news-story/7fcddc40781b7df655ebd84e086dced7.

CHAPTER 5

Crafty Crimes: The Criminology of Craftivism

Abstract  In this final chapter I reflect on the importance of creative endeavours in drawing attention to matters of social justice and consider what lessons criminologists can take away from broadening their horizons when it comes to examining the intersections between creativity, culture, and crime. Keywords  #UDHRquilt Cultural criminology

· Human rights · Creativity ·

For a number of years now I have been following the exploits of yarn bombers and craftivists, paying particular attention to their various social media platforms as they document their projects. While, at best, I am average at knitting and crochet, I have been keen to use my skills in embroidery, cross-stitch, and sewing to engage in some craftivist creations of my own. The opportunity to participate in a craftivist project presented itself in 2017 when textile artists Tal Fitzpatrick and Stephanie Dunlap put out a call on Instagram and Facebook for crafters to join in a new craftivist venture, the #UDHRquilt Project. Described as ‘a collaborative craftivism initiative documenting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR)’, the project was to feature handcrafted quilt blocks of the 30 Articles of the UDHR as a way to not only celebrate 70 years since the document’s creation, but also reflect critically on the Articles (Museum of Australian Democracy, n.d.). The overwhelming © The Author(s) 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1_5

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response to the call for participants resulted in over 130 artists from 45 different nations joining in on the initiative, culminating in the crea­ tion of four 2 × 2 metre quilts—bordered in red, blue, green, or yellow patchwork fabric—each featuring the embroidered articles of the Declaration (Fitzpatrick, n.d.). The quilts were launched and put on display at the Australian Museum of Democracy at Old Parliament House, in Canberra, Australia in late 2018, with plans for the exhibition to later tour internationally. Collaborating with friend and colleague Dr. Elaine Fishwick, our contribution to the project was a hand embroidered piece, featuring iconography crafted from wool felt. Featuring on the ‘green quilt’, Elaine and I stitched Article 12 of the UDHR, which states: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. (United Nations 1948)

One of the reasons Elaine and I were particularly keen to participate in the project was because of the subject matter. In writing our artist statements which accompanied the piece, Elaine and I made note of the importance of human rights both generally and in the context of our professional endeavours. We also reflected upon the capacity for craft to draw attention to matters of social justice, much in the way that I have outlined at various points in this book.1 Being part of this project allowed me to bring together interests, skills and passions of mine in ways that I could never have imagined. Before I encountered yarn bombing, I had not considered that there might be different ways of drawing attention to injustices, social causes, or human rights. Of course, in hindsight, these connections are obvious, and have been important to so many movements and cultures throughout history. The findings of this study demonstrate the importance of creative endeavours in drawing attention and responding to a whole range of social concerns, many of which are the very same concerns that criminologists themselves hold central to their work. The findings also highlight 1 High-resolution images of each of the quilt blocks and accompanying artist statements, including our own, can be viewed on the Museum of Australian Democracy website by visiting. https://quilts.moadoph.gov.au/artists.

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the privilege that is often afforded to many of those who engage in such practices. While this acknowledgment is not raised with the intention of suggesting that acts, such as yarn bombing, should be subject to legal interventions—quite the opposite—it is an important in the context of understanding that enacting forms of resistance and engaging in forms of protest and activism is not experienced the same by everyone. Notwithstanding this, researching craftivism has highlighted for me the important contribution that participatory politics has and can make to many of the social justice concerns that criminologists are engaged with. Consequently, I argue that craftivist practices, such as those explored in this book, are just one example of the possibilities available to criminologists to further explore the intersections between creativity, social justice and crime. This potentiality is twofold. While the discipline has produced a wealth of important research into the cultural practices of ‘boy racers’, paint graffiti artists, and dumpster divers, just to name a few, this particular project demonstrates that if (cultural) criminologists widen their horizons, they may encounter a whole other world of cultural practices that are worth a closer look, particularly those practices that, for the most part, are ‘female pursuits’. Further, the project also identifies the importance of creativity in communicating our research. In an era where impact and community engagement is growing in importance in the academy, creative outlets for disseminating and articulating our research offer new ways for us to connect with the public. In this concluding chapter, I want to reflect on the key findings that emerged from this particular study and reflect upon what these mean for criminology.

Research Findings At the outset of this book I related the five key questions that guided this particular research. These questions were relatively exploratory, seeking to better understand the practice of yarn bombing, and the perspectives and feelings of those who engage in the practice. The questions also sought to consider the relationship between yarn bombing and the broader craftivist movement, both historically and in its contemporary manifestation. From the analysis of interviews with yarn bombers, and the broader craftivist movement, the study identified three overarching l­ ogics within which motivations for yarn bombing (and craftivism more ­generally) could be situated: personal, community, and political logics.

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With regard to the personal logic, the study found that many yarn bombers report being motivated by the enjoyment they get from yarn bombing, citing it as a therapeutic way to create art. These personal logics also overlapped with community logics, with yarn bombers stating that one of their motivations was to make other people happy, to bring them joy, and to add some colour into their day. In this way, yarn bombers also demonstrated a desire to build up their communities, foster connections and, overlapping with political logics, beautify and soften public spaces so that communities can better enjoy them. For those yarn bombers who engaged more explicitly with political logics, yarn bombing was a way to use their skills to make political statements, take a stand on injustices and intolerances, and protest for change. Some yarn bombers saw the opportunity that the practice gave them to connect with the community and to share their thoughts in new and exciting ways. These political logics also overlapped and intersected with personal logics, which saw yarn bombers champion an anti-consumerist way of life. Further, they saw yarn bombers use their craft as a way to advocate for autonomy and self-determination, both culturally and biologically. It was clear from interviews that yarn bombing meant multiple things for those who engage with the practice, and ultimately it was framed as a positive way to communicate and engage, whether or not there were overtly political messages underlying these communications. As the interviews also highlighted, yarn bombers were often attracted to the practice because it subverted a number of norms and expectations about the way crafts such as knitting and crochet should be used, about how women should act, and about public expectations more generally. While many yarn bombers spoke about the potential deviancy of the act, many acknowledged that the likelihood of them actually getting in trouble for what they were doing was low, even though the act might technically be illegal. Examining this dichotomy more closely, these findings support arguments that yarn bombing is seen as aesthetically acceptable and yarn bombers exceptional in the eyes of authorities. For yarn bombers, there was a sense of excitement and a thrill that they got from engaging in the practice. As one interviewee explained, it is a relatively safe way for (primarily) women to be ‘naughty’. While recognising the overlaps between what they do and other forms of graffiti, yarn bombers, however, were more likely to classify the practice as a form of (street) art because, unlike graffiti, they do not see their installations as destructive or damaging. This characterisation would

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appear to align with the perspectives those in authority have towards yarn bombing. That police rarely, if ever, take action against yarn bombers for their creations and, further, that yarn bombers are being commissioned to create yarn installations for corporations, signals quite a different attitude than we have seen taken towards other forms of street art and graffiti. While indeed we have seen some changes in the way that street art/graffiti have been perceived in more recent times, I am not sure that such acts have received quite the same level of tolerance that yarn bombing appears to have. Such observations raise important questions over what (and who) comes to be labelled as criminal, as well as why there are such discrepancies in official reactions and responses to these different, but complementary, forms of street art. As was pointed out in Chapters 3 and 4, these findings overlap significantly with the interests of cultural criminologists in particular. Arguably, yarn bombing could be considered a pleasurable act of defiance, one that is celebratory, exciting, and thrilling for those who participate in it. So, while this project may have started out as a bit of fun for me, speaking to yarn bombers and witnessing the resurgence of the craftivist protest movement provides criminologists with an opportunity to explore a unique activity that perhaps challenges some of the ways we have ordinarily understood graffiti, deviancy, risk, and gender.

References Fitzpatrick, T. (n.d.). UDHR Quilt Project. Tal Fitzpatrick. Available at: https://talfitzpatrick.com/udhr-craftivism-project. Museum of Australian Democracy. (n.d.). The #UDHRquilt Project. Museum of Australian Democracy. Available at: https://quilts.moadoph.gov.au/about. United Nations. (1948). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Available at: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/.

Index

A Aboriginal flag, 21, 22 Activism, 8, 9, 11–15, 18, 22, 27, 39, 45, 59, 84, 106 AIDS Memorial Quilt, 31, 32 American Civil War, 16 Anti-bikie legislation, 33 Anti-colonial and anti-slavery craftivism, 18 Anti-consumerism, 26 Appropriation, 69, 70 Arpilleras, 37, 38 Art, 2, 3, 5–7, 9, 12, 13, 17–22, 34, 35, 39, 40, 45, 61, 64, 70, 71, 74, 75, 80, 84, 93, 96, 99–103, 105, 108, 116, 117 Authoritarian aesthetic, 102 B Badass Cross Stitch (Shannon Downey), 35

Beautification, 74, 75 Body Count Mittens, 17 C Carnival, 80, 94, 108, 109 Carnivalesque, 4, 74, 79, 108, 109 Commercialisation, 79, 80 Community building, 45, 47 Corbett, Sarah, 13, 24, 25 Craft, 5, 7–9, 11–15, 17–27, 30–32, 34, 37, 38, 41–47, 59, 60, 67, 71, 73, 78, 80, 83, 84, 98, 100, 114, 116 Craft Cartel, 14, 33, 34 Craftivism, 5–8, 11–16, 25, 30, 31, 35, 37, 41, 45–47, 78, 84, 85, 106, 110, 113, 115 Craftivist Collective, 13, 24–26, 33 Creativity, 7, 45, 73, 106, 115 Cresswell, T., 4, 18, 79 Criminology, 106

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Limited, part of Springer Nature 2019 A. McGovern, Craftivism and Yarn Bombing, Critical Criminological Perspectives, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57991-1

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120  Index Crochet Coral Reef project, 27–29 Cultural criminology, 115 D Deadly Knitshade, 69, 98 Deviancy, 9, 94, 101, 103, 104, 116, 117 Diversity and inclusion, 82 DIY movement, 27 E Economic and anti-capitalist craftivism, 23 Edgework, 74, 103, 109 Embroidery, 7, 15, 32, 35, 41, 113 Environment, 15, 21, 27, 67, 68, 74, 76–78, 84, 95 Environmental and eco-craftivism, 27 Ethnic privilege, 70 Etsy, 14 Exceptionalism, 70, 96, 101, 103, 104 F Fashion Revolution, 25 Feminine/Feminism, 15, 16, 41, 44, 77 Ferrell, J., 4, 9, 69, 74, 75, 82, 101, 102, 109 Fine Cell Work, 38, 39 Fuentes Rojas, 37 G Gandhi, Mohandas, 18, 19 Gendered violence and bodily autonomy craftivism, 41 Gender equality, 86 Gentle protest, 13

Graffiti, 2, 5, 6, 9, 61, 64, 65, 68–70, 74, 93–96, 99–102, 104, 108, 109, 116, 117 Graffiti and street art, 99, 102 Greenham Common, 17–19, 79 Greer, Betsy, 7, 12–14, 27, 28, 37, 40, 45, 46, 66, 84 H The Handmaid Coalition, 41 Happiness, 72, 74, 88 Health craftivism, 31 Human rights, 38, 114 I Indigenous culture, 20 J Jorgensen, Marianne, 17, 30 Just, Kate, 42 K Knit a River project, 27 Knit Not War 1,0o0, 17 Knit the City, 98 Knitting, 2, 5, 7, 14, 16–18, 22, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 36, 41, 42, 44, 45, 61, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 77, 78, 83–86, 94, 97, 98, 100, 104, 107, 113, 116 Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG), 28–30, 78 Knit Your Revolt, 33 L Legality, 2, 9, 94, 97 Logics of craftivism, 8, 9, 45, 87, 88, 93

Index

M Manifesto, 6, 13, 23 Marriage equality, 81, 86 Memorialisation, 80 #Metoo, 43, 44 microRevolt, 23 The Monument Quilt, 43 Moore, M., 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 78, 104, 107, 108 N NIKE blanket petition, 24, 25 O Occupy Wall Street, 25 Old Mom Rinker, 16 P Participatory politics, 4 Performance, 14, 20, 62, 72, 108, 109 Pink tank, 17 Pleasure, 8, 72, 74, 104, 107, 108 Police, 2, 18, 33, 70, 81, 96, 98, 102–104, 110, 117 Political, 4, 7, 8, 12, 14–18, 20–22, 26, 28, 29, 31–34, 37, 38, 41, 42, 45, 46, 72, 80, 83–88, 93, 101, 110, 115, 116 Prain, L., 64, 66, 67, 70, 71, 78, 104, 107, 108 Presdee, M., 4, 72, 74, 80, 107–109 Protest, 7–9, 12–15, 17–19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 30, 33, 34, 36, 37, 41, 42, 44, 45, 47, 62, 69, 72, 80, 81, 83, 84, 102, 106, 116, 117 protestAR, 26 Public space (reclaiming), 33, 75–78, 88 Pussyhat project, 44

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R Red Sweater Deployment Project, 16 Reichardt, Carrie, 40 Removal, 32 Resistance, 4, 9, 13, 17–19, 27, 38, 42, 105, 106, 109 Revolutionary Knitting Circle (RKC), 22, 23 Risk, 6, 9, 24, 70, 94, 95, 104, 105, 108, 109 S Sayeg, Magda, 66–68 Sexual violence, 27, 43, 86 Slavery, 19 Social impact, 81 Social justice craftivism, 32 Social Justice Sewing Academy (SJSA), 35, 36 Stump Cozy, 27 Style, 6, 20, 67, 78, 102, 108 Subversion, 27, 94, 103, 105, 106 Subversive, 9, 15, 16, 60, 61, 69, 71, 76, 80, 99, 100, 103–107, 109 Suffragettes, 41 Survival, 19, 20 T Tactics of resistance, 78 Tempestry Project, 30, 31 Textile industry, 19 Thrill-seeking, 94, 103 Tit Bits, 32 Trump, Donald, 30, 35, 43, 44 U #UDHRquilt, 113 Uluru Statement from the Heart, 21

122  Index V Victims of crime, 36 Violence against women, 42, 43 W War craftivism, 8, 18 Wartime Knitting Circle, 17 Wellington Craftivism Collective, 26 Women’s March, 35, 43, 44

Y Yarn bombing, 1–9, 11, 12, 17, 61, 62, 64–74, 76–80, 82–85, 87, 93–110, 114–117 Yarn bombing definition, 6, 60, 61 Yarn bombing motivations, 6, 9, 47, 59, 61 Yirkkala bark petitions, 21 Young, A., 6, 74, 88, 98, 101, 102, 109