“Two tablespoons of encouragement”
The signals and lived experience of crafternoon at gather on Dudley High Street
Over cake and coffee in gather — the space and community they call home — three wonderful doers talked me through the ingredients of their craft collective, the journey traveled as it has evolved, and what crafternoon means to them.
Shared learning
Doers in our ecosystem of projects are generous and active contributors to our shared learning culture of #detectorism.
In case you you haven’t taken part before, detectorism is our way of learning together, out in the open. We do this by paying attention to the patterns in what we all witness, feel, experience, say and do as a community. We think about how those patterns relate to the spaces we shape and inhabit, and the wider systems that we interact with.
So the purpose of our crafternoon detectorism was to help us to be really intentional as a community in understanding the signals this mature project emits, the spaces it occupies, and how that shapes the behaviours and social norms it encourages. Understanding the social norms, values and mindsets within our community that in turn can shape system structures and patterns of behaviour is key to our work as a social lab in scaling deep (impacting cultural roots). You can learn more here about our approach to different types of scaling.
We use different tools to help us design for and understand that scaling including principles focused evaluation, iceberg systems mapping and signals surfacing and analysis - like this crafternoon detectorism.
First of all an introduction to crafternoon
Crafternoon is a regular meet up of people who want to craft together. A chance to share and learn skills, swap tips and get inspiration. You bring projects you are working on, discuss ideas for new projects, test new techniques by sharing skills and experimenting together. But most of all crafternoon is fueled by the joy of crafting in the company of others — strangers, friends and friends to be.
From it’s early beginnings co-designed by 6 women in Spring 2017 this group have learnt together, grown friendships, tested new project formats, shared skills, developed spin off projects (walking groups and sewing classes), pooled resources, and most importantly created a safe space to grow in confidence and wellbeing.
Two years on we wanted to dig into the important elements of that journey, the qualities of crafternoon that doers value most, and how they take care of a culture rooted in self organising, mutualism, affirmation, a slower pace and generosity.
Signals to indicate scaling deep
In a world often framed by a deficit focus— what we can’t do — crafternoon offers a safe space animated by peer based care and support. Indeed a key ingredient these doers all agree on is crafternoon provides “two tablespoons of encouragement”. This community actively model certain behaviours — affirmation, inclusion and welcome — that are a function of their values around nurturing people’s gifts and talents. This aspect of their DNA also talks to the slow living signal it emits — encouraging a pace that works with wherever you are at on any particular day. If you don’t want to, or don’t feel able to craft on that day you don’t have to — you will be made feel welcome regardless. Their intentional modelling of behaviours embeds these values and encourages others to behave in the same way.
“New people learn from demonstration and modelling behaviours that there is a culture to observe and sometimes we are gently explicit, but mostly we model it and people work it out” (crafternooner)
These doers describe a sense of belonging the group creates via a peer based support network. This support network fosters the courage to experiment, and the value of sharing ideas, knowledge, skills, and spare resources that enriches them all and erodes barriers to taking part. The active re-purposing of materials and sharing of equipment this group practice and advocate are qualities of a more regenerative culture and abundance thinking.
“It is a meeting of like minds, friendship, support, we endorse each other, demonstrate to each other” (crafternooner)
“It is about the free knowledge exchange for ideas, equipment, time to try new things” (crafternooner)
“Yeah it is a barter economy, it is a good way of sharing” (crafternooner)
Persistence & building trust
Reflecting on their journey as a group they celebrated the importance of “being there - even when only one or two of us were able to make it” (crafternooner). Knowing that being a reliable and persistent part of this civic space would build trust and confidence in their emerging craft community:
“The point is it always happens — this is why I keep looking at the persistence and being there (lab) principle — it is more than crafting we are a community” (crafternooner)
“Being there matters because it brings a sense of belonging, a confidence” (crafternooner)
“It brings unity and lines of communication” (crafternooner)
Identity
For these doers the power of crafternoon — as a project they help drive; as a community they collectively nurture — lies in how it contributes to their identity. They spoke about how crafternoon creates a sense of purpose and shared responsibility, with a rhythm that forms a meaningful part of their weekly routine. They described how crafternoon publicly affirms the value of craft, and of “being crafty” in their sense of self and who they are. It also offers a rare positive space where they are NOT defined by the negative or pejorative labels often imposed upon them and acted out by society more broadly. They describe the negative impact on their sense of well-being of other social or institutional spaces where they are defined by and grouped according to poor health, or older age and retirement, or their employment status:
“Crafternoon gives me creative voice and confirms who I am “crafty”, helps me support gathers’ ethos.” (crafternooner)
“This fulfills a need in me, when you retire you lose your identity, your world closes down, and here I feel I can contribute, share, it is affirmation, and it is my way of supporting gather” (crafternooner)
“I am not defined by my medical illnesses, it is not who I am” (crafternooner)
“Here I am crafting and I don’t want to be defined by my age, or retirement.” (crafternooner)
The power of space and emergent cultures
What was also noticeable in this learning session was the importance of growing this craft community, slowly and organically, within the community and safe space of gather. Gather offers a space created by people they trust and whose community interest company is driven by values they want to support and share. They also noted how the intentionally user friendly and flexible space within gather made it easy to test out different formats for the project. This flexibility and embracing of experimentation is all too rare in civic spaces. Just as crafternoon emits signals of persistence and willingness to experiment gather offers the same on a broader scale as the home of the CoLab Dudley social lab.
Their interaction with lab happenings and other projects in gather is also a particularly interesting signal this group emit. So while they are self-organising as a group, as individuals and as a creative community they also actively participate and contribute their skills, stories and talents to Trade School classes, Yoga classes, collective photography exhibitions, and do-fest festival planning at gather and create dinners. In this way they are actively nurturing the emergent culture norms of creativity and curiosity the lab and platform are supporting.
Making use of signals in our platform/ lab practice
Having surfaced these signals with the doers we can now be on the look out for them in other work, spaces, and experiences. These signals include: active affirmation and peer to peer support (including being explicitly judgement & label free); pooling and sharing resources and skills; removal of participation barriers (e.g. cost, equipment, skill threshold, formality of gathering); creative curiosity and experimentation; and persistence and being there. Detectorism surfaces the value (the different types of capitals) these signals contribute to within our community and we can be mindful in creating conditions for similar signals to emerge in other parts of the ecosystem as well as knowing where to help forge connections.
In observing and listening carefully for signals across the ecosystem of projects we can surface patterns that will offer insights into the relationships between signals and trends in behaviour, norms they encourage, values they nurture, and evidence of the emergence or decline of more abundant and regenerative cultures on our High Street.
A note on our learning together as a community
As ever I am grateful for the wisdom shared by these doers and the way they so generously dive into our shared learning. After our detectorism session I wrote up our notes, printed them off, and shared them back with the doers knowing that my own perspectives and biases flow through our learning together, and I wanted to sense check the notes. I also wanted to say thank you and did so with small bunches of daffodils. The next week I was gifted back the beautifully crafted image at the top of this learning note inspired by those daffodils.
Abundance is a practice that flows through this community.
