Teresa Torres de Eça
Textile Cartographies is a participatory action research project using textile arts as story telling, coordinated by APECV Research Group on Arts, Community and Education (GriArCE) with 29 groups from universities, schools, collectives and NGOs in Americas; Africa; Asia; Australia and Europe. This arts based research project intends to study the impact of narratives about environmental sustainability through collective textile art and design actions. The project has a duration of 36 months at least, starting in January 2021. The applied methodology is a qualitative research, based on participatory action research and arts based methods. In July 2024 participants from Australia; Canada; Cyprus; Japan; Mexico; Namibia; Portugal; South Africa; Iran; China; Spain; United States; Italy and Israel were involved in the different groups. More than 3000 Participants collaborated in actions promoted by local coordinators in museums; schools; universities; cultural centres; social care and non-profit organizations.
Results of three years of the project showed that collaborative arts and crafts in are means to enhance wellbeing; to promote sense of belonging and to help people to express their voices through non-conventional communication methods.
The project enlarges the scope of arts/crafts and education, creating inter social; intercultural and intergenerational dialogues around a strong concern for everyone’s life. The cartographic process, as mapping , drift and reflection about places had been included in the project, has been an important aspect. And may be in this exploration of the cartographies the creation of networks, the implication of the different groups of participants was the key for the good results we have achieved so far, as if the road of the project is made by all these small dots where each group have experimented the 10x10 textile squares as a personal map of hope, and the sum of all the voices, that come to light each time there is an exhibition or a collective action makes this project worth because it creates a sense of belonging not to a global world but to all the worlds of respect and caring for the planet.
Research Group in Arts, Community and Education, APECV, Portugal
Policy briefing
During our research project participants from minority and peripheral groups in the world are able to express their views and communicate using textile crafts their views on issues such as environment; climate justice; social justice and other sustainability. Exploring visual discourses using arts and textile technologies enable spaces for democratic participation; social connection and wellbeing.
Press briefing
TC participatory arts based project , runs with people from 26 groups from Africa; Asia; Australia; Europe and Americas, where more than 2500 participants, mainly women, are joining stories about the planet and human life in the planet to connect between them and exhibit their textile stories in strategic places.
Educator briefing
Here you can see how schools, museums, cultural centrers and social care centers are promoting textile arts as a way to talk about planet challenges; societal problems and climate justice.
The catalogue of the deliveries of the project Textile Cartographies during 2021-2022 with texts and images.
Textile Cartographies presentation at Zanzibar , St Augustine University of Tanzania, 23-27 September 2023
Research Group in Arts, Community and Education, APECV, Portugal
