Crafts can save the world (and your community)

An over-the-top claim? Maybe. But try out these 5 lessons from local craft leaders and see if you don’t feel better

Maryam Kreishan is with NROCRC and facilitates weekly craft groups. As she knows what it's like to be a new arrival to Canada, she knows how to offer support. “I think the women feel very comfortable coming to me and sharing,” she says.

When the women in Maryam Kreishan’s craft group gather together in a community space in Parkwood Hills or - new this week - in Craig Henry, they are solving problems.

To someone peeking into her room every week, it might look like 20 or so women sitting side by side sewing aprons or preparing food for a new recipe. Which they are indeed doing: strong sewers helping newbies, recipes from home being shared with new friends.

But the craft activities in their hands are so much more than just fabric or freshly prepared dishes. For these newcomers, the craft group is a place for them to get outside of the house among other women who understand the challenges of adapting to a new life. They may speak different languages, but using gestures, body language and their newly developing English, they share stories about their children and ask each other for advice. Someone learns how and where to buy a car. Some may make a new friend that they’ll meet up with outside of the craft group.

Kreishan, the program’s facilitator and an administrative assistant at NROCRC, says she’s heard many group members over the years say to her, “I don’t have family here. All of my family is in my country. But when I come here, I feel this is my family.”

A new weekly craft group has just launched at 249 Craig Henry Dr. The new space has a large gathering area for crafting and a kitchen for baking and cooking too.

And as this new family is made, they also make, say, oven mitts. It may have taken the group four weeks to get each member’s project completed. But something that didn’t exist in the world now does. And they created it together.

Because the thing about craft is that it’s not necessarily the outcome - the product - that matters most: it’s the journey. Crafts (the items) and crafting (the activity) can be gateways to community connections for everyone. This includes the work and contributions of professional craftspeople all the way through to newbies learning to work with fabric or wood or clay for the first time.

Jennifer Salahub, a professor emerita of art and craft history at Alberta University of the Arts, grew up in Ottawa and still spends time in the region in the summers. As someone who has dedicated her professional life to the study of craft, like Kreishan she too has witnessed how craft can make us happier and our communities stronger.

Together, Kreishan and Salahub have five lessons for all of us - craft participants, craft-sharers, craft-appreciators or even just craft-users - that we can put to use today.

At the group’s April-1 gathering in Parkwood Hills, each member brought a favourite dish from home to share. Kreishan’s dessert, here, was enjoyed down to the last crumb.

Lesson 1: Don’t be good at crafts or crafting - be near them

Maryam Kreishan has been running the craft group for eight years and laughs when I asked her about her crafting skills or training. “My background is in information technology,” she says, which she studied at university in Jordan. “I don’t know how to sew.”

What she does know how to do is collaborate, facilitate and support women who do have training and skills. “I meet women who are very good,” she said. “So I’ll ask them, ‘please come and help us. You’ll be the teacher.” Then while she orders the supplies they’ll need for the project and facilitates the two-hour session, her on-site experts guide them through the project and they’ll all learn together.

In ditching perfection and staying open to practising, learning and making mistakes we empower our community members who are willing to teach us.

Salahab has embraced this sentiment too. “I can do any stitch - I just can’t do a whole bunch of the same ones that look good,” she says with a laugh. So while she’s taken many art classes in order to understand the techniques, the art she practises is researching craft and writing about it.

She encourages us as newbies to get out there and actively play too.

“I’ve done clay,” she says. “I love the touching of it. It’s the handling I want. Because I can touch it and see how it’s made of love, right?”

The work of professional craftspeople is essential. But amateur craft - clumsy craft - has its own lumpy magic. This beauty was made in a community pottery class.

Lesson 2: Respect for basket weaving - and basket weavers - is future-forward

You may remember the sourdough craze of 2020-2021? Or the sip-and-paint meet-ups we did over Zoom? During the pandemic when we were all trapped indoors, people found their way to crafts. If anyone had held any dismissive assumptions about crafting - it’s unserious or for people with too much time on their hands - it was suddenly forgotten.

Craft was a hero.

As it always was and will continue to be. In fact, in her new book “Art Cure: the science of how the arts save lives,” author Daisy Fancourt says that engaging in the arts is “the forgotten fifth pillar of health,” alongside diet, sleep, exercise and nature. “And you don’t need to be any good at any of these things to reap the health benefits,” wrote Jancee Dunn in the New York Times last month. “All you have to do is take part.”

Today, however, some are back to throwing shade at the word, the act and its practitioners.

A recent example: Ontario’s premier told students in February not to choose “basket weaving courses” in response to cuts to OSAP. As in “basket weaving” is shorthand for areas of study that couldn’t possibly contribute to “jobs of the future.” Or that it doesn’t matter.

When she was in the classroom full-time Salahub used to send her students out to ask community members, “what do you think when you hear the word ‘craft’?” As her students were in art school, she says, they imagined everyone they spoke with would understand the beauty and importance of what they were studying.

Their person-on-the-street chats, however, showed them that, alas, not everyone saw what they saw. “In the real world, people just think they’re out there doing nothing,” she says. As in, craft is something people do in their leisure time. For fun. It’s not serious or important. (And, it goes without saying, as it is also associated with “women’s work,” it’s a non-serious activity.)

Disrespect for craft isn’t anything new - but supporters of craft are done with it. In response to Premier Ford’s basket-weaving jab, the chair of Toronto Guild of Weavers and Spinners had this to say: “A lot of the arts, including basket weaving, involve a level of mathematics, planning and engineering,” she said. In other words, all pretty useful activities in lots of very modern ways.

Jennifer Salahub makes these broken-heart cookies to cheer herself up. She enjoys “breaking” the hearts in two with a little knife before she bakes them.

Lesson 3: Solo crafting - or craft fandom - helps us all too

Since the late 1980s, every time Salahub had her heart broken or felt annoyed, she’d pull out her friend’s recipe for broken-hearted cookies printed on a much-loved recipe card and get down to baking.

The recipe features the best quality cocoa you can get your hands, a hint of cayenne pepper and fresh-ground pepper. It also required her to punch out heart shapes with her cookie cutter and then jaggedly divide them in two by hand.

When your heart is hurting, the act of producing, sharing or enjoying something human-made is a bit like a warm, crunchy cookie: medicinal.

“Craft is comfort, right?” she says. “Whether you’re making it or whether you’ve found, say, the perfect cup that you can hold, somebody has made it. It fits in your hand.”

A specific example from her own life: “I have glasses that I buy at the [Alberta] Craft Council that have got some of these indentations on them, kind of dimpled. And that means that even though my hands are getting more arthritis, I can pick up a glass without having to worry about dropping it.”

Even though she’s just sipping water - or splitting cookie hearts into two - the tactile experience of doing, creating or appreciating a hand-made item becomes a pleasurable one.

When she shares what she’s made - or just brings the good vibes they produce - into the wider world, everyone benefits.

The long-time crafter who stitched this old, comfy grey cardigan when it sprouted holes says she doesn’t know how to do Japanese mending - yet. But adding a spot of colour gives it a new life.

Lesson 4: When you ‘make do and mend’ it makes you generous

Whether it’s being driven by environmental reasons, financial ones or creative ones, thrifting or fixing up worn clothing has moved beyond a trend into an everyday norm.

In the weeks ahead as we start to peel off our heavy winter coats, keep your eyes open for neighbours who’ve, say, brightened up an old cardigan with cheery thread or who’ve stitched some beads onto a tired t-shirt. Tap them on the shoulder and give them a compliment. Or seek their advice about how to spruce up some of your own well-worn sweaters.

Salahub reminds us about history’s “make do and mend” movement during World War II in Britain and beyond. “You make do with what you’ve got or you mend what you have,” she says. Today, she says, this shows up in the elaborate mending that people are stitching onto blouses and sweaters that are meant to be shown off.

“My friend is merrily sewing gorgeous patches on the elbows of her sweaters,” she says. “And it looks so cool.”

Here in west-end Ottawa, Maker Savvy has sewing classes for beginners and the Beaverbrook branch of the Ottawa Public Library has monthly knitting classes. Browsing the aisles of a local thrift shop for finds that spark fun thoughts can be a good starting place too.

“Craft is comfort, right?” Salahub says. “Whether you’re making it or whether you’ve found, say, the perfect cup that you can hold, somebody has made it. It fits in your hand.”

Lesson 5: Host a mini craft show-and-tell with your neighbours

If I ask you, “what’s your favourite hand-made craft item in your day-to-day life?” what would you say?

Don’t overthink it. Maybe it was a gift? Maybe you made it yourself? Perhaps your grandma or your little nephew gifted it to you? Or perhaps you bought it from a professional potter or fabric artist or glassblower?

My prediction is that when you’re asked to stop and think about it, you’ll have a tough time picking just one. For instance, from where I’m sitting here at my desk I can see a hand-drawn birthday card from my son, a clay butterfly bowl from a potter at a craft show and a pink wooly scarf my friend Kathryn knitted for me years ago. They’re all contenders.

When we pause to consider them, these items - which, really, are so much more than “stuff” - enrich our day to day lives in so many quiet, essential ways. They’re often deeply meaningful - and yet we take them for granted.

Salahub suggests we stop doing this. She advises us to talk with others - deliberately - about our craft items. For instance, she suggests we host a mini craft show-and-tell event with our neighbours, friends or community groups. It doesn’t need to be a fussy affair. It can happen in the driveway. On a neighbour’s porch.

Here’s how:

Step 1: Invite everyone to bring along one craft item that’s meaningful to them. Encourage them not to overthink it. “They can bring something their mom made,” she says. “Something that’s interesting or handmade. It could be an Indigenous work. It could be a piece of soapstone that someone gave them. It could even be a cool rock that they like.”

Step 2: Everyone takes a turn to present their selected item.

Step 3: See what happens next. Mini fairs like this call out crafts’ powers.

Back to our craft group

At this week’s meet up in Parkwood Hills, Kreishan’s group each brought a favourite dish from home to share. Afghani dishes were joyfully compared to Moroccan ones, Nigerian rice discussed next to a Syrian version.

And over at the Craig Henry group’s location, they’ve stocked the kitchen with baking and cooking supplies and bags of useful craft items have started to arrive. But the plan for their first project - or celebratory meal - awaits.

It’s a decision the group members will make together.

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April west-end Ottawa craft-and-crafting recommendations:

• Don’t just paint and sip a landscape or a vase of flowers: Loboba Milk Tea house in Barrhaven is hosting a “Paint your person” event on April 24.

• Strum beautiful music for your neighbours at Mort’s Pub in Bells Corners every Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m. Their acoustic open mic night wants your version of “Lovers in a Dangerous Time,” by the Barenaked Ladies.

• Trivia can be a creative act when you’re playing with a team. Stop into Cassette Listening Bar at Baseline and Greenbank Roads on April 8 for “Trivia Throwback” night. Public Relations students at Algonquin College are hosting the fundraiser in support of Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization.

• Some board game players can get pretty crafty? Knox United in Woodvale will be hosting cards, refreshments and conversation on April 13 and 27 from 2 to 4 p.m.

• Sign up for a course at the Nepean Visual Arts Centre at the Nepean Sportsplex. There’s a hand building course beginning in April, for instance, that still has room. (Want to join me? We can try our hands at a vase or little flower pots together?)