What were you going to be in Nebraska for next spring? :o [if it's alright to ask!]
I was going to be doing PhD research at the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
The original plan for my PhD was to really focus my research on the arguments used to justify non-commodified design sharing, to see if there was anything in that which could be applied to broader anti-commodification movements today. But to do this meant speaking more with older, offline quilters, whose experiences hadn’t been as influenced by the emphasis on hustle culture that occurs in online crafting spaces. But as a millennial Australian, that is not a demographic to which I have easy access. UNL previously offered fellowship programs in conjunction with the IQM, but, understandably, those have been called off for the time being.
I was basically going to spend a few weeks snowball sampling quilters who had experience with uncommodified pattern and design sharing, to get as many perspectives as possible to contrast the very pro-commodification rhetoric that dominates online. I already have a lot of information and access to discourse which encourages the commodification of knowledge, I just wanted to see if it was possible to source and utilise counter arguments from the quilt community to advocate a more open sharing of knowledge in general. And because Nebraska has the International Quilt Museum, it seemed like the best place to start finding those respondents.
Sadly, what with everything that is going on, it is turning into more of a theoretical work tracing the movement in quilting towards greater commodification and how that shift aligns with sociological shifts. While this is probably actually more sensible, it is a lot less fun. Fortunately I have had other chances to advocate keeping creative knowledge free, probably in ways that they reach more people, but still. I think we all want to believe our research will make some big societal difference, and it is harder to feel that spark when your work is more of a historical join-the-dots than a rousing call to action. But maybe one day!
