{"id":1700,"date":"2026-05-27T14:38:44","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kwalon.nl\/?p=1700"},"modified":"2026-05-27T14:38:44","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T14:38:44","slug":"","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kwalon.nl\/en\/2026\/05\/27\/stitching-care-textile-art-as-feminist-methodology\/","title":{"rendered":"","raw":""},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false,"raw":""},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false,"raw":""},"author":3,"featured_media":1701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_nl_post_content":"Feminist participatory action research (later referred to as FPAR) promises to do research differently, to disrupt hierarchies and redistribute epistemic justice that determine whose knowledge counts and under what conditions with a focus on creative methods and reflexivity. Yet, naming a research practice \u2018participatory\u2019 or \u2018feminist\u2019 does not necessarily make it. This blog reflects on the tension between the promise of FPAR, to flatten research hierarchies and centre marginalized knowledge, and the reality of conducting this alternative approach within an academic institution, and all the constraints that it brings.\r\nIn addition to traditional forms of FPAR the methodology centred itself around the concept of care, understood as everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world (Tronto and Fisher, 1990), ranging from its association with private, domestic labour to becoming a lens for examining how we relate to one another, who bears responsibility for whose needs, and whose labour remains invisible. To treat care as methodological practice, rather than only as research subject means actively creating the conditions in which participants can show up, contribute, and be heard.<\/p>\r\n
The research project began as an exploration of how childcare policies shape everyday life in Amsterdam, particularly for migrant mothers navigating these systems through their caregiving practices. We (the researcher and the feminist textile collective Warmi Kuyen) collaborated to host a series of Arpillera, textile art workshops in a local neighbourhood and invited mothers to learn the technique, and use it to tell their own stories. Workshops rather than interviews were chosen deliberately, creating a space where mothers could return, build relationships over time, and contribute to the research on their own terms, representing their experiences visually and at their own pace.<\/p>\r\n\r\n
A feminist textile tradition<\/h2>\r\nArpilleras are a textile technique (patchwork) that emerged during the Pinochet military dictatorship in Chile (Moya-Raggio, 1984) between 1973\u20131989. They were developed primarily by women whose family members (husbands, sons, daughters, and grandchildren) had disappeared, imprisoned or killed, transforming fabric and thread into a means of narrating histories that the authorities were actively suppressing. Today, activist groups across Latin America and beyond use Arpilleras to centre marginalised voices: making visible stories of extractivism, human rights violations, gender-based violence, social inequality and local struggles. Their power lies in telling the truth, nothing stitched is fictional.\r\n\r\nWeaving care into the methodology<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThe workshops followed the FPAR approach, in which participants become researchers themselves and gain agency within the research process. FPAR centres local women's and gender minorities' knowledge, with particular attention to researcher reflexivity and creative data collection (Frisby, Maguire, & Reid, 2009; Bleijenbergh, 2023). This project added another dimension: placing care, not only as object of inquiry, but as methodological practice. This means asking, at every turn: are we caring for the people who are caring for others? <\/em>\r\n\r\nThe workshops were conceived as an act of giving care to those who are ordinarily expected to give it without receiving it, creating conditions in which mothers could share their experiences without added stress instead of simply extracting data. Instead of entering a community temporarily, non-extractive research attempts to create more reciprocity, by giving back. In practice, this meant covering materials, collaborating with artists to teach the technique, offering optional financial compensation, arranging childcare, and providing a warm shared lunch.\r\n\r\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.kwalon.nl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/blog-barbara-kwalon-picture-300x171.jpg\")
\r\n\r\nStill from video documentation by Guusje Meeuwissen\r\n\r\nFPAR: opportunities and limitations<\/strong>\r\n\r\nFPAR typically works with local groups where trust and intimacy already exist. This group formed during the process, requiring patience and work to build trust. We drew participants in by partnering with local organisations, flyering in the neighbourhood, posting in Facebook groups, and volunteering at community initiatives. When trust did emerge, it felt even more significant for having been built from scratch. By the third workshop, something shifted: conversations became more open, more willing to go to difficult places. Trust is not assumed in this methodology; it is built, slowly, and the timeline of the research must allow for that. It requires embracing flexibility and letting the research be shaped in its own direction, an exercise in balance and authenticity as much as in method. It offers a slower, more relational pace to the research that allows for more depth to develop than in a quick interview or survey.\r\n\r\nThis type of approach is resource heavy and comes with real costs such as paying the textile collective as workshop co-facilitators, arranging childcare, covering materials. Its viability depends on circumstances that not every researcher has access to. In this case, funding came from fieldwork costs typically reserved for research abroad; conducting the research in my own city freed those resources up. The mothers also carried a significant share of the commitment as participants, showing up every Tuesday, week after week.\r\n\r\nThe Arpilleras were both an outcome and a process, inseparable from the conversations and hands that created them. The tactile nature of the work created a social rhythm throughout the research: each session began with mothers resuming their stitching and their conversations, creating a natural flow that allowed movement in and out of dialogue without pressure to fill silences. Mothers' choices of what to stitch and how, became data in themselves, embodied and affective which is a deliberate condition in FPAR. The workshops created a space for introspection, and mutual recognition where participants came to understand their experiences shaped by larger structural forces. The facilitated research space transformed into a collective that persisted on its own terms. The workshops became care infrastructures: networks of mutual support where mothers felt supported rather than studied, and where the boundary between researcher and participant continued to blur. FPAR can, not only offer a way of collecting data, but conditions for collective knowledge production and furthering justice in recognition.\r\n\r\nHowever, working in a group brings up the challenge to give sustained individual attention to each person. Some voices emerged more readily than others, and the dynamics of language and familiarity with reflective space, shaped what was said and what remained unspoken. We addressed this by balancing whole-group and subgroup conversations, allowing discussion in whichever language felt most comfortable. The care diaries also created an additional space for reflection, enabling those who spoke less during sessions to express themselves in writing. However, this suggests that participatory frameworks may reproduce subtle exclusions, leaving the quieter participants less visible.\r\n\r\nThe hardest challenge came towards the end of the workshops, when the group that had formed, wanted to continue. The mothers expressed a strong desire to continue meeting, a desire that we felt urgent to fulfil. I drew on existing relationships with local organisations to secure a small grant through a neighbourhood centre. As Warmi Kuyen, we committed to joining periodically as artists and facilitators. The aim was a space that would eventually run on its own terms, independent of any of us.\r\n\r\nYet this independence proved harder to realise than anticipated. Even as ownership was redistributed, participants struggled not to turn to the same figures for direction. Traditional hierarchies do not dissolve because a methodology intends them to, and this is where FPAR's meets its limit. While a sense of collective belonging had developed, expectations of guidance and authority remained difficult to unlearn, revealing how deeply embedded these dynamics are within research relationships. This is perhaps the central tension of studying care through care: because caring relationships are inherently interdependent, incorporating care as methodology can amplify as much as soften power dynamics. Dependency and expectation do not disappear and must be consistently negotiated within caring methodologies.\r\n\r\nOn the other side, academic structures pull you into the opposite direction, demanding detachment, analytical distance and asking for the ability to step back, distancing itself from the human attachment that a care-based methodology asks. Too much presence risks prolonging dependency, too little, risks withdrawing from the relationships that gave the research meaning. The distance required by academia is harder to attain once real relationships exist, and there is no obvious moment when your role as a researcher is complete. In practice, this meant overpromising, taking on small tasks that accumulated quietly, and at some point, realising I had become the spokesperson for a project that was supposed to belong to everyone. Stepping back from that role was necessary, but it did not come naturally. The line between care for the group and responsibility to the research was never fixed; it had to be actively negotiated, throughout and after.\r\n\r\nWhat this project made clear is that treating care as a methodology creates relational commitments that do not end with the workshops and that are not always equal. If I were to do this again, I would build the question of transition into the design from the beginning: who holds the project when the researcher steps back, and what does stepping back actually look like in practice. FPAR does not simply dismantle power; it requires continuous negotiation, long after the research is formally complete.\r\n