CfP: Humanitarian Handicrafts Workshop (University of Huddersfield 27-28 June 2019)
Organised in partnership between the universities of Manchester, Huddersfield, and Leeds Beckett, this workshop invites contributions which explore how and why humanitarians and humanitarian organisations have generated the production of artisanal products and ‘folk’ artwork over the past 120 years.
We will be seeking to examine the circumstances in which humanitarians have sought to utilise arts and craft production variously as a means of engaging disaffected humanitarian subjects, instilling national values and aesthetics, creating communities based on gender or nationality, to ‘transfer’ skills or to create cooperative forms of production. We are also interested in how this has fed into a culture of participatory handicrafts by humanitarian donors and supporters, fundraising, membership through consumption and the communication of sufferings.
The focus of the workshop arose from an interest in the textiles produced during the South African War, but recognises the preceding incidences of the creation of craft goods for fundraising purposes as part of humanitarian work. We invite contributors to reflect on this history as well as on the present practice of the production of fabrics, carpets, jewellery, clothing and items of cultural and orientalist significance in missionary work, labour-centred orphanages, refugee camps, rehabilitation projects and development cooperatives as well as on their display in exhibitions, charity shops, or even mail order catalogues.
We are interested in the following (non-exhaustive) list of issues: the sociability and embodied practices of humanitarian arts and craft production, the racial and national politics of ‘ethnic’ handicrafts, the nature and scale of the trade (including notions of fair trade), the role of religious groups in promoting craft-based projects, the invention of forms of craft goods, the role of handicraft in the support of vulnerable groups such as the disabled, or as rescue work for “fallen women”, issues surrounding the concept of “authenticity”, the pedagogical transmission of skills in urban and rural environments, as well as the production of objects at the centre in aid of the periphery. We are also keen to explore the politics of curatorial care and the archiving, marketing, and display of this material. We would particularly welcome papers focused on the objects themselves, or with an eye to the visual aspects of the subject.
We anticipate papers on the following periods and sites (but would welcome others): the Anglo-Boer War, refugee camps (for instance UNRRA camps in West Germany), relief arts and craft work as therapy in health institutions, or as development and empowerment strategies.
Please send your title and 300-word synopsis and a brief biography (as well as any queries) by 18th March 2019 to Professor Betrand Taithe and Rebecca Gill: humanitarianhandicrafts@gmail.com