The Yarn Mission - Knitting for Black Liberation
Recently, a few supporters of the C.R.O.C.H.E.T Project sent me an article from the Guardian about a radical knitting collective in Ferguson, St. Louis that are using knitting as a way to open up dialogues on racial and social justice. Tomorrow marks the one year since Michael Brown was unjustly and fatally shot by police in in Ferguson, St Louis. I remembered when it happened. The C.R.O.C.H.E.T Project had been going on for four months and I was immersed into deep thoughts about about art and social justice. When I read about what had happened to Michael Brown, I asked myself what art can do in times like these to support others to open important dialogues and move forward.
And one of them is The Yarn Mission, a collective that aims to crack open the dialogues on injustices faced by black people.
The Yarn Mission’s purpose resonated strongly with me. They used knitting as a way to engage with the public in a direct way that invites conversation without the need to use words as a visual invitation. Instead, they let colours, texture and action do the work for them, as Taylor Payne describes.
“As a black woman, you’re invisible,” says Taylor Payne, a member of the group. “But knitting makes people stop and have a conversation with you. If someone asks me what I’m doing, I say, ‘I’m knitting for black liberation.’ Sometimes they respond and sometimes I just get ‘Oh, my grandma knits,’ like the person didn’t hear me. But at least it opens the door to talking about my experiences.”
This collective also got me thinking about how similar both our project’s intentions are, even though it happened under very different circumstances. Both projects aim to highlight the invisible community, to open doors for people to talk about their experiences and using these experiences to create community and solidarity. Art, crafts and story-sharing thereby forming the thread between people to understand each other and to support each other.
From right: Taylor Payne, CheyOnna Sewell and two members of The Yarn Collective. Photograph: Sarah Kenzidor for the Guardian.
“People consistently underestimate the power of knitting,” says Sewell. “They don’t recognize its radical properties. They’re always surprised when they talk to us about what why we’re knitting, like, ‘Is she talking about racism right now? Did she really just say ‘police brutality?’” Every Wednesday, I go to a local sewing club that comprises of six wonderful women and me. We come from different racial, economical, educational and social backgrounds. When the group first started, our conversations revolved mostly about crafting and sewing. As we got to know each other better, we started talking about things that really mattered to us, like racism, ageism, sexism, ableism, classism, intersectionality, feminism, patriarchy, police brutality, political injustice, environmental injustice. Often times, we go into deep details of how injustices affected us personally. Yet these conversations were unintentional. They emerged because of each of us are interconnected to this world. We all carry invisible threads that bind us to each other. Everything that happens in St. Louis affects us as well. And such is the power of interconnection. It’s the butterfly effect. Not talking about it just seems bizarre. Note: We also talk about Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian. And that’s the beauty of conversation in a group like this. We create the safe space to do this together and crafting allows us to safely NOT talk about things that were uncomfortable and triggering for us as well.
We support each other to to both be brave and vulnerable. That is the power of the arts and crafts to impact social change. It is not not just about expression. It is about what happens after that expression that is important. I am so grateful that The Yarn Mission exists. If you haven’t by now stopped reading what I wrote and googled them, you really need to. Better yet, here’s the link to this amazing group and I highly recommend checking out the page about “Their Struggle”. There’s an amazing introduction on Intersectionality written by Kimerle Crenshaw.
http://theyarnmission.com/
