A Stitch in Time? Craftivism, Connection and Community in the Time of COVID-19

Abstract

The Centre of Democracy's mission is to share stories about democracy and democratic practice in South Australia, and to motivate and support individuals and communities to play an active role in changemaking. The second of these aims was central to a public engagement project entitled Stitch & Resist which we began developing in late 2019. In March 2020, just days before we were due to launch the project, COVID-19 hit. CoD, along with the other museums run by the History Trust of South Australia, was closed, all public events were cancelled, and we suddenly started to talk about ‘pivoting’ – what it meant and what it might look like in practice. How, we wondered, could CoD remain relevant and useful during lockdown? How might we facilitate discussions around some of the issues that the pandemic and the measures introduced to ‘flatten the curve’ were bringing to the fore: housing and homelessness, isolation, wellbeing, domestic violence, racism, inequality, to mention but a few? And how might we collect around and document what will undoubtedly prove to be a historically significant moment? Stitch & Resist has become a vehicle through which we have explored and responded to these questions and the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 has engendered.