Touch Craft defines itself as “a not-for-profit organisation that explores methods of embedding stories into textiles as a way to engage different audiences and contribute towards social cohesion and wellbeing.” The project was co-founded by textile and interaction design researcher Lucie Hernandez, and developer Edwin Love. The team uses e-textiles to design innovative soft technology products together with local crafters, and facilitate workshops, encouraging participants to utilise the multi- sensory capabilities of e-textiles (visual, tactile) and electronics (sound, visual, tactile) for storytelling. Their approach is grounded in co-creation and participatory design (Hernandez, 2017).
Original goals of Touch Crafts’ proposal responded to the Social and Workplace Ethics theme set by
WEAR as follows:
– Active involvement of people: Embedding technology in communities’ interests through crafts
– Advocacy: Advocate for community requirements and personalise functionality
– Business models: Create security and future resilience for the groups activities through reinvestment from profits
They further responded to the ‘Environmental Sourcing and Life-cycle theme’, providing clear links to the aforementioned social sustainability goals. These included:
– Circular design: Community determines best practices for reuse and repair
– Design for attachment: Develop a relationship with products, reducing replacement
– Maintenance training: Actively involving beneficiaries in repair activities.
Reflecting Activities
Touch Craft initiated two strands of work during the six-month WEAR funding period.
One part aimed towards prototyping commercial e-textile interior products. The second was a series of community workshops, which however also explored the concept of market value of “team-initiated” e-textile products. Small batches of the two prototypes Story Blanket and Sensory Cushions were fabricated and tested.
The value of community crafting for health and well-being of the participants emerged as the
main benefit of the project. Hernandez observed that multi-sensory engagement with the crafted object “enabled people to engage on a deep level” and express and communicate personal stories through materials and local nature-related themes.
Hernandez mentions that e-textiles have not yet been around long enough to assess if crafted objects can embody similar meaning to people as traditionally crafted artefacts do, however points out that the process was similar: using personal storytelling, defining a purpose and the addressee of the object.
Participants reflected positively on collaboration, multi-sensory materials and meaning to personal memory. One participant describes their experience on collaboration as,
“I was interested in the combination of sound and touch and feel, so the whole kind of concept behind the project”. Another participant reflects, “I love working like this, and especially working with these embroidery silks, it takes me right back, granny showing me how to split the threads.”
Identifying the communities both as “participants and producers”, Touch Craft sees the benefits on “small-scale processes, slow, local production”, ”nurturing an emphasis on slowness, valuing present time, re-skilling through shared knowledge, learning and co-creation”. They frame this as “durable
practices” (see also Chapman, 2009) and observed that “through the act of cooperating and participating directly, people increase in confidence and develop their creativity and imagination.” The aim is to encourage also business activities by producing and selling team-initiated e-textile products. By the end of the WEAR funding period, the prototypes were tested by the participants in their homes.
Greinke B., Sametinger F., Baker C., Bryan-Kinns N., Hernandez L., Ranaivoson H. Social sustainability approaches in electronic textiles crafts communities, 2019.