All right so I’m Sarah and when people ask me what I do and I say I’m a craft mist I do activism through handicraft the normal response is you know that sounds fun that sounds lovely I’ll do that and my response inside hidden deep underneath a smile is pure frustration because I think craft abysm can be so much more than fun it can be much more fulfilling it can change our worlds personally and it can change our world politically and structurally and by just seeing it as fun I think could stop people thinking about how it could actually be more than fun and help our activism and be one of the many tools in the activism toolkit that we can use to improve our world there’s lots of forms of craft divisa mout there if you google air I always think it’s a little but a bit like thinking about punk music there’s so many different punk bands out there from The Ramones to the Sex Pistols to the Talking Heads – blondie all sound completely different if you google craft or ISM there’s so many different approaches my approach I call gentle protest that’s what I call it and I don’t mean gentle as in passive or weak I’m talking about gentle as in compassionate carefully done with strategy with consideration and with that compassion and I think that’s much harder to do and having that self control and do an activism in a loving way than just doing it in a fun may be shallow may be aggressive way I run the craft of is collective these little labels that people sell on their craft of ISM kit says made with courage in care which is a bit of a nudge to my craft service to say do this courageously speak out which is scary and comfortable but do it carefully do it with a clear strategy a clear objective figure out who your targets are who are you trying to engage who has the power who doesn’t who are the influences who to these power holders listen to all of that stuff means that it’s not always fun but our motives shouldn’t be fun our motives should be how can we help make our world more beautiful kind and just for everyone how can we help everyone fulfill their potential and help the planet fulfill its potential and eradicate these structures that oppress us and the planet itself so my approach is that general protests I’m not a crafter never went to art school I learnt to craft from YouTube so I’m pretty basic but I am an activist and I’ve been an activist since I was three that little child with a mullet that’s me my mom used to cut my hair cuz we were on a budget I’ll never forgive her this is me this is me with my local community stands an outside social housing for families on the top of our roads where I grew up in West Everton a very low-income area and when you can see the banner behind it and we squatted to save social housing that we’re going to be demolished to build a park that no one wanted and if anyone knows low-income areas you know that to build a park just eradicate generations of families that are close-knit and it makes an area much more unsafe we won that campaign and so I grew up in an area with my dad as the local vicar my mom is a nurse then a full-time mom of three owns at the age of five living on the 14th floor of a tower block which nearly made her had a mental breakdown on Attwood Giselle and grew up seeing where my community were campaigning on local national and international issues where we won where we lost lost and how important strategy was but also how important love and humility and listening to people we disagree with and serving the cause and not just aiming for our own ways of having fun and actually I think it can be bad taste sometimes if we’re having fun when we’re challenged and structures that are making people suffer I think it’s it can it makes me a bit uncomfortable there’s Critical Thinking three ways that I think craft was lots more but I’m gonna talk about three ways that I think craft can be more than fun and the first one is that it can really help with critical thinking which isn’t always that fun if we’re honest it means your brain hurts a little bit and craft is really good because it’s often repetitive actions that I use to get people to use that repetitive action to meditate to calm their minds from being super angry calming them down to be in less foggy and more focused on what am i doing where can I use my power where’s my influence what can I do is an effective activist and using the process of craft which is a very comforting thing to do when you feel completely disempowered in the messy world and think what can little old me do every stitch shows that you’re doing something it’s very empowering it’s good for mental health it’s good for burnt-out activists and it really gives you that comforting space to ask yourself uncomfortable questions and I might form a practive ism I always have crafter thoughts questions with every different project we’ve got it depends on what the projects for it’ll have questions like what are your values and how do you thread thread them through what you do is consumer as a constituent as a citizen pretty juicy uncomfortable questions but you’ve got the time and the process of doing that stitching to focus your mind and go yeah and my practice and what I’m like what I’m preaching or am I just telling other people to do it or if you’re making something for a power holder how can it engage them rather than it be all about you or if you’re making something for the public what do you want the public to do once they’ve seen your piece of craft of ism is it going to empower them with a call to action or is it going to overwhelm them where they go I don’t know what to do about this in fact that you’ve just given me or this is so vague I don’t quite know what you’re asking so it’s all about critical thinking for the process and I think it’s a wasted opportunity if we don’t have those big juicy questions to meditate on our own or in a group and Craftivism group Crafton is incredible because as you can see here you don’t need a contact with people which is very different to an activism meeting where it’s quite scary to disagree with someone where they contact or to have a silence where people reflect and don’t just go what are we going to do how are we going to do it let’s do it now and leave it creates a space for personal craft of thoughts but also for difficult discussions with each other you can listen to people you disagree with without looking at them and without looking at them you can say hang on a minute tell me a bit more about where you’ve come to that decision I’m not sure I agree one of the quotes I love in my book for the crafter list and I didn’t tell iterate it don’t worry it’s a real one and she says the first 10 minutes I just felt frustrated at my terrible handiwork I had to unpick my terrible stitching and start from scratch by having to go back and start from scratch was the most important moment it made me stop it made me really stop and think about what I was doing in other words it allowed me to be a full of me as it didn’t stop my critical thinking to function if anything it made my brain work better it pasted it leaving space for even more connection and so much of our activism is quick transactional quick responses we need sometimes to do slow activism alongside it for me I talk about general Slow activism protest as practive ism and one of the hardest things which isn’t is so much more fun probably to crochet a voodoo doll of your favorite prime minister or or president and send it to their office it’s fun it would get more likes on Instagram it would make you feel fun in the short term but is it effective or is it harmful it’s not effective you’re just preaching to the converted and it’s harmful because all it is is doing is creating more division which is not helpful for anyone and create and more hate so I get people to make gifts for people they disagree with I get them to make gifts for board members to politicians for influential people to say make the movie bespoke gift for them that they will cherish but that will encourage them to do their their job in the best way and one example is that I was asked by share action that does shareholder activism their CEO said that they’ve been trying for three years to get the biggest retail company in the UK to be a living wage employer she said for three if they tried everything and got nowhere she’d read my little book and said it’s so weird you’ve got five weeks before the AGM of the company can you do something so I thought yeah I’m not gonna try and get every crafter vist in the country or the world to do stuff and do a giant quilt and something big and brash I’m gonna ask 14 practiced from across the UK there are loyal customers of their core base for this shop because they’re going to listen to their customers not to people that don’t look like their customers and I’m gonna give them a board member each and I’m gonna tell them to Google the out of their board member and find out what colors they wear what old jobs they used to have are they a trustee of anywhere what are their passions are they shy or they extra better they flamboyant today you know timid what is it about them and can you make them a hankerchief bought from that company to show that we weren’t boycotting them we were customers and Stitch a message saying don’t blow it use your power for good you’ve got a difficult job but a powerful job and we want you to do the best job you can and really make that hankie something that they’d like not something that you’d like you might like pink but if they don’t like pink don’t make it pink do who don’t do capital letters and exclamation marks telling them what to do use it as an encourage and tool and then write a handwritten letter to go alongside it saying while I was making your gift for X amount of hours I was thinking about how impressive it is that you’ve got this job how much power you have but also how much responsibility and I was shocked that you don’t pay the living wage we loved your staff it makes sense to pay them the living wage but it also makes business sense with staff retention with lots of other reasons they were a robust argument that was emotive with intelligent and we hand-delivered them in a very humble way Handdelivered arguments which again isn’t that fun it would be much more fun to throw it up in their faces I have a giggle but we went you have the power we’ve made you these handkerchiefs and here are some of the examples and we had people who stitched flowers on for one board member who was a trustee of Hugh Gardens which is an amazing place in the UK one loved music so he had music notes all over his handkerchief and within ten months we not only got the meetin that we asked for we got many more meetings we had lots of boring meetings with them and within 10 months they announced they would pay in the living wage to 50000 staff and the chair of the board told me very quietly that this the next year when we went back to the AGM to say thank you not to say well done us we went back to say well done board members that was amazing and but we want you to be accredited living wage employers now which is a little bit more difficult to get them to do but the chair of the board told me very quietly afterwards that this campaign had more engagements than any other campaign that they’d ever seen they constantly refer to their hankies when they met even if the living wage wasn’t on their agenda and he really thanked us for that which is quite incredible since they said no for three years to the living wage so it’s about that humble activism where its strategic it’s about them it’s not about you but that’s much more fulfilling than quick fun and the third one is craft Craftivism and activism abysm can be really good to intrigue people there’s lots of other forms of activism out there and in my work I never try and compete with it I try and compliment other forms of activism and see craft or ISM as one jigsaw piece in the jigsaw puzzle and where we can help or the campaigns or fill gaps where lots of activism tools aren’t helping so fashion revolution for example incredible NGOs that work on improve in the fashion industry and they work online and I thought we should do some offline stuff I love fashion revolution but how do we engage people that love fashion buy and cheap fast fashion stores how do we engage them to intrigue them not demonize them or tell them that they’re not allowed to love fashion anymore but how do we get them to think about who made their clothes so I get people to shop drop mini fashion statements it’s the opposite of shoplift and you shop drop them you shall drop them in unethical shops that you think could improve you just go into a shop with a handful in your pocket and you drop them in share pockets in bag pockets and then when people find them you can see on it it says please open me fall in lower-case with a smiley face in the case so elderly and hitch it’s got purple ribbon because purple is seen as a luxury color for us and in our culture and our behavior so it’s seen as more luxurious and something cheap it has in busted scissors on it so the texture using two or more sensors make us remember things more so you want to touch it and it doesn’t say what it’s about so you as the the public have to decide if you’re going to open it and if you decide to open it you’re more likely to have an open mind and an open heart so then if something’s forced in your face and it will say a message in it like who made your clothes where they made with joy or where they made with pain then what values are threads are throughout this item and then it has at fast rev at the bottom so you’ve got more information if you want to decide to go and find out more info and people make them and we shop drop them and it’s not about us and it doesn’t say fashion a craft of its collective on it anywhere but as well as engage in the public it means we had media all over the world last year during London Fashion Week and Paris Fashion Week saying and you can find any of these in your pockets so we got a message out there that was intriguing that was positive that made people curious but hopefully also lingered in their minds which was strategic and fun in some ways but much more than fun I think it could actually help fulfill us to be that change we want to see in the world thank you very much you