Weaving Waving
2024
Weaving Waving is a communal mental and embodied practice inspired by the theme of climate-related emotions. This social design project aims to address the emotional impact of the climate crisis by creating a safe and open environment for discussing these feelings. Through a weaving diary individually, participants reflect on their emotions in a pre-workshop, share their experiences during the workshop, and contribute to a collective woven piece. This therapeutic method fosters both personal and social resilience, providing a space for expression and mutual understanding within the community.
Research
As we start to pay more attention, we naturally experience diverse emotions such as concern, worry, hopelessness, loss and sometimes even positivity. Having climate-related emotions is occasionally good, for instance, worry can be beneficial because it motivates action. However, if these various emotions are not properly processed and continue to accumulate in our bodies, they could drain our daily energy reserves and cause mental health issues such as climate anxiety and eco-grief. I interpret this phenomenon as seriously influencing both individual well-being and society at scale in the long term.
Many psychologists and eco-therapists recommend community engagement as one of the means to cope with such challenges. However, not everyone has access to such communities. Additionally, my primary research interviews with over 10 international people uncovered that in certain cultures, sharing emotions with close relationships like family members is uncommon. They either never have experienced it yet or tried but failed to continue because everyone does not know how to converse on this. This obstacle to spreading the shared culture which is essential to dealing with this social problem.
Materials
The materials used in my workshops focus on being "Local" and "Natural," and they vary depending on the workshop location. In the Netherlands, for instance, I incorporate locally sourced wool from moorland sheep, which are primarily used for grazing and whose wool is often underutilized. Additionally, I use hemp traditionally made in Andong, South Korea, which has historical significance in Korean mourning customs—the roughness of the fabric symbolizing the depth of sorrow.
Methodology
As both a designer and an individual struggling with these emotional challenges, I designed a form of workshop focusing on, first, making a space that shares emotions and practices safely and the question ‘Then how can we share them more comfortably?’ For those who are not familiar with sharing, I thought the workshop should have a methodology facilitating conversation instead of just sitting and talking. The first tool that I developed, the way of forming conversation visually led me to adopt weaving craft as a mental health practice, it is an important methodology to help participants easily navigate their emotional landscape and provide a comfortable environment that fosters open dialogue and connection.