Diffraction in textiles-based community craft groups

Textile-based community crafts are often described as an intervention for bringing people together, improving social connectedness and reducing loneliness. This article draws on Barad’s (2007) method/concept of diffraction to offer a different way of understanding connection and belonging in textile-based community craft groups. In doing so, it considers how artefacts of sewing contributed to the emergence of connections and a sense of belonging in two textile craft groups in a city in the Southwest of England. In the article, we draw on Barad’s method/concept of diffraction to analyse interviews with participants in the craft groups, as well as observation notes that were generated in the craft groups. This analysis approach involved reading interviews and observation notes through Barad’s (2007) philosophy, as well as literature focusing on textile-based community craft groups. Based on such an analysis the authors suggest that artefacts in the community craft groups helped to produce connections and a sense of belonging in the following ways: 1) By disrupting boundaries and exclusions 2) By helping participants’ pasts to ‘bleed through’ (Barad, 2018, 220) their presents and 3) By helping to create possible futures.