Yarning Connections
Year Awarded
2022
Amount
€49,642
- Organisation:South East Technological University (SETU)
- Audience:General Public
- Format:Non-formal Education
- Location:Waterford
- Topic:STEAM
Project Summary
‘Yarning Connections’ is a project that brings together traditional yarn crafters and knitting and crochet community groups from Waterford and the surrounding locale with technical driven experts from Walton Institute’s E-Textiles Lab. Through peer-to-peer knowledge sharing workshops and collaborative idea generation, a core group of yarn crafters will actively engage in a STEM exploration and investigation of electronic textiles (e-textiles), experimenting with the integration of different conductive yarns in traditional crafts, knitting and crocheting soft switches and integrating them in a textile circuit.
Adopting a train the trainer approach the core workshop participants will learn how to integrate Lilypad wearable boards and will be provided with the skills and equipment to knowledge share with their own community groups.
E-textile resources in a language suitable for yarn crafts (i.e. patterns) will be co-designed and co-created. This provides an opportunity to drive new e-textile/craft engagements and create a sustainable and meaningful network of skilled e-textile crafters, who learn from each other, keeping alive the old traditional craft methods while encouraging the practice of e-textiles as potentially complementary disciplines rather than mutually exclusive.