Description

This one-day workshop invites participants to engage with anthropology through making. The workshop introduces sewing as a material method, enabling participants to engage with alternative and creative approaches in anthropological research and explore how knowledge can be produced through embodied practice.

Led by a visual anthropologist working with multimodal and public-facing methods, the workshop draws on long-term ethnographic research (2018-2025) with quiltmakers in South Manchester. Participants will be shown examples of collaborative quilts made during this research, demonstrating how anthropological fieldwork can create material and visual outcomes alongside traditional textual forms.

In this drop-in session, stitching will serve as a methodological device to open dialogues about innovative research approaches that are not often associated with anthropological fieldwork. Through making together, participants will be asked to reflect on apprenticeship, communities of practice, and the forms of sociality that emerge through shared work.

Participants will stitch small paper templates commonly used in quiltmaking. These individual pieces may be taken home or, if participants choose, incorporated into a larger collaborative textile after the workshop, materialising the collective nature of anthropological enquiry. No prior sewing experience is required.

The workshop foregrounds the anthropology of the body and the senses, creating space to explore slow work, co-creation and shared silence. Through making, the session demonstrates how anthropology can be practised as a tactile, relational, and participatory empirical method.