Crafting wellbeing: a dynamic collaboration between people, disciplines, and trees

Abstract

From the introduction:

Craft thinking allows the material dialogues that take place during the act of making to become methods of possibility-finding. It requires active reflexivity throughout that dialogue, with the willingness to let go of pre-conceived ideas, tools, or techniques in response to listening to what the materials want to say and to the negotiated and novel affordances that emerge (Groth and Nimkulrat 2025, Brinck 2025, Barati and Karana 2019). When repetitive practical tasks are performed – for example, stitching, weaving, knitting - the mind of the maker is able to travel laterally: to tentatively explore conversations with other knowledges and disciplines, glimpse further possibilities and dreams, and to fold these back in through a generative process that disregards traditional disciplinary boundaries (Brinck 2025).
This paper discusses the dynamics of this ‘folding in’ of diverse knowledges and peoples in a craft-led research project, through the work of the Barkcloth Research Network. It explains how a pragmatic, craft-led investigation into the potential of a radically indigenous, endangered textile for sustainable fashion has evolved into a multi-disciplinary research project with a team that currently comprises designers, farmers, artists, craftsmen, environmentalists, textile technologists and scientists in the UK, US and Uganda. The research demonstrates the potential of craft to assist in resolving complex, wicked problems and advances the role of craft-thinking in brokering new relationships and possibilities between people, disciplines and the more than human.