Mending for Radical Hope

(WellBIEN Kranj, Slovenia, 2025, part of reTHREAD: Self-care and community care through textiles and nature)

A collaboration with Indian educator and theater practitioner Amrita Lalljee, this workshop explored hope as a metaphor for uncertain times. Through song, movement, and recycling discarded fabrics, mending became an act of repair and transformation.

Increasingly, artists, educators, and cultural workers are focusing on mending and repair - both literal and metaphorical - as a powerful tool for storytelling, activism, grief, remembering, and healing. In this workshop, participants reflected on the challenges we face as world citizens in responding to geopolitical conflict and collective grief. Using the power of the needle, participants engaged in articulating an ethics of community care in a world where carelessness reigns. Through collective mending and storytelling, we strategized how to create collaborative ecosystems of care and radical hope.