Remodelling Barbie, making justice: An autoethnography of craftivist encounters

Abstract

I provide an autoethnographic account of “craft activist” workshops wherein I facilitate participants to remodel dolls to reflect their feminist or other social justice concerns, and describe one specific workshop with a powerful, personal impact in relation to childhood sexual exploitation. In drawing a connection between the vulnerabilities of one workshop participant and my own, I reflect upon our responsibilities as ethical feminist researchers. The larger function of the workshops is thereby argued as a co-created feminist space whereby we attend to the needs and desires of our intersectional feminist community. I draw upon material from diverse fields, such as art therapy, ethnography, and cultural studies, to flesh out a consideration of how to transform difficult emotions and experiences into useful “equipment for living”, and to contribute to a scholarly conversation about the intersections of autoethnography, craftivism and feminism. The central questions answered by the work are, firstly, how representations of stigmatised identities or experiences have impacted upon me as workshop facilitator, and, secondly, how we can continue to come to voice with, and support, each other in our making of a more just world.