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Workshops

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Spin, Card and Chat Workshop @ Rekindle Festival

Date: May 2023

Location: 

Irish handweavers, Stacks, Ennistymon, Co. Clare

Participants:
General public, 8 participants, pre-booking required

Workshop Description:
Drop spindle skills workshop with critical questions about what we make and why.

Purpose:

Public engagement and critical reflection on issues of production and consumption (SDG 12) to inform ideas for sustainable alternatives:

The following problem posing questions:

What we make and why? Who benefits, Who suffers? What else can we make? and how we can make flourishing communities.?

Duration: 1 hours

Event: Rekindle Festival, Common Knowledge

Facilitators: Giselle Harvey & Jean Moran

Workshop Structure:

The workshop was organized into five parts :

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  1. Session Introduction: Skills learning and Critical Reflection on Making

  2. Skills demonstration and introduction to the problem posing questions

  3. Participant skills practice

  4. Invitation to share thoughts on the reflection questions using the swing tags provided

  5. Close
     

This was a one hour workshop but could be expanded into a whole day or 2 day workshop depending on the context.

In this workshop I wanted to explore the problem posing questions about making using a pop-up street workshop with the spinning wheel with the questions. The workshop became two workshops: Spin Card n Chat and Card n Chat.

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The spin, card n chat workshop was a collaboration with Jean Moran of Irish Handweavers and in association with the Rekindle Festival and Common Knowledge.

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Jean Moran is a maker-artist, local handweaver, spinner, environmentalist and maker educator. She was interested in the critical questions and was due to run a drop spindle skills workshop for rekindle so we teamed up for one workshop.

 

The Rekindle festival has an intergeneration skills development ethos and seeks to engage with older people in the community to learn lost skills, It is thought of as old skills being connected to younger hands in contemporary times. Common Knowledge is a non-profit social enterprise based deep in the Burren, Co. Clare.

They share skills in building, making, mending and growing, because 'we believe that between us all, we have the knowledge needed to create a truly sustainable future'. The Common Knowledge Centre (ourcommonknowledge.org)

In the zone: Learning a maker skill and thinking deeply and critically about making

Lead Researcher Reflection:
Though the event was advertised as as drop spindle workshop with critical reflection questions, most people attending this workshop came for the skills aspect.

 

People did offer some thoughts on some of the questions towards the end of the session, In particular they responded to the question
'what do we make and why? and generated some interesting reflections and questions. See box below.

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Action planning was not within the scope of the timeframe of this workshop 

 

Suggestion:

To respond to the questions more deeply this workshop would benefit from a longer timeframe such as a 1 or 2 day workshop, or a week long workshop

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Images of harvested response's to questions documented on swing tags by the a facilitator and later photographed:

Summary of outcomes:

Key Generative Themes From the Sessions in response to the following questions:

What do we make and why? Who benefits, Who suffers? What else can we make? and how we can make flourishing communities.? 

What do we make and why?

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  • Purposeful, useful,

  • Skill is powerful

  • Lovely to use your hands

  • Transcending

  • Connection to materials

  • Connection to self, inquiry, wellbeing

  • Connection to community, 

  • Connection to rhythm

  • Disconnection with Industry is reflective of a disconnection within ourselves.

Key Really Useful Questions From the Sessions

Who asked for the industrial revolution anyway!?

if you can make, why wouldn't you? Why would you give away your power? (audio)

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These are really useful problem posing questions to pose to the group as a jumping off point for further discussion and action planning. Whilst email addresses were collected for future workshops these did not go ahead due to institutional circumstances which took up time.

Working with the SDG's:

The workshop can be structured to weave in some of the SDG's, as a cluster, to explore alternative production and economic structures to bring about social and environmental just change

Below is one possible Cluster: Starting with SDG 12 & 13 to explore other SDG's 

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Resources

REKINDLE Festival of Lost Skills — The Common Knowledge Centre (ourcommonknowledge.org)

Jean Moran: 'Crafts are a good tool to help calm yourself'  (irishexaminer.com)

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