Re-knitting: exploring openness through design

This paper profiles a doctoral research project that investigated the idea of openness within fashion in order to understand the relationships between amateur fashion making, well-being and sustainability. The research was conducted through my practice as a designer-maker of knitwear. The primary design activity involved the development of methods of ‘opening’ and re-knitting existing garments. This activity provided a practical platform through which I was able to explore openness at two, increasingly abstract, levels: first, opening my design practice to share design skills with amateur knitters; and second, opening fashion through amateur making. At the conference I will show a sample garment featuring five different re-knitting ‘treatments’, which I produced while working with the research participants. The research produced an extensive re-knitting resource, and a nuanced understanding of the lived experience of wearing homemade clothes in contemporary British culture. Furthermore, the study generated transferable knowledge relating to the reworking of existing items and ways in which this can be supported; the abilities of amateurs to design for themselves and the conditions which encourage this activity; and the changes in practice and identity which take place as we shift between the roles of designer-maker and meta-designer-maker

Satisfaction and frustration: the well-being experience of homemade knitwear

This paper considers well-being in relation to homemade knitted garments. The topic forms part of a qualitative design research project investigating amateur making as a sustainable fashion strategy. Within this context, well-being is identified as an integral component of sustainability. A small group of amateur knitters took part in the project; they were interviewed individually before taking part in a series of knitting and design workshops with an experienced designer-maker. The process of knitting is widely recognised as beneficial in terms of well-being, offering a source of relaxation, personal satisfaction and social connection. However, knitters can experience frustrations, such as patterns restricting opportunities for creativity. Homemade clothes materialise the making process, and wearing them can create a strong sense of identity and pride. However, the positives of the making process do not automatically carry through to the wearing phase. Homemade clothes are marginal in comparison to the mass-produced norm. They are particularly vulnerable within the context of contemporary fashion, which is already ambivalent in terms of well-being. Despite these issues, the preliminary results of this research indicate that amateur knitters can be supported to work without fixed patterns and achieve wearable results which contribute to a positive sense of well-being

From stitch to society: a multi-level and participatory approach to design research

The aims of this paper are twofold: to describe a doctoral research project that investigated the theme of openness in fashion, and to discuss a distinctive, practice-based approach to design research that emerged through this process. This approach uses the generative processes of designing and making, in collaboration with participants, to investigate research questions at multiple levels: from micro-scale practical challenges to much broader social issues. The project in question explored the potential for opening and altering existing knitted fabrics while simultaneously investigating the role of homemade clothes in challenging the conventional fashion system; it also considered opportunities for amateur knitters to engage in creative design. A series of workshop activities supported the exploration of these areas of interest, with insights relating to each one emerging throughout the process. In this article I have revisited and extended my original contribution to the Research Through Design 2015 conference that discussed this research, adding commentary to frame the project more explicitly in terms of the multi-level approach. I will first describe the research context and activity in detail, before stepping outside this particular example to discuss the potential of this novel approach to design research

Rethinking the designer's role: the challenge of unfinished knitwear design

The central proposition of my PhD research is to explore the idea of openness within my practice as a designer-maker of knitwear. This focus developed out of my interest in the radical potential of amateur fashion making as a sustainable fashion strategy. While I am exploring the idea of openness on various levels, in practical terms I am designing ways of re-working existing knitted garments. I am testing and developing these methods with a small group of female amateur knitters at a series of discussion and workshop sessions. Opening up my practice brings into question my role as a professional designer-maker. In this paper, I draw on a range of sources to explore ways in which I might address openness, and discuss their implications. Using The Poetics of the Open Work by Umberto Eco, I compare classical compositions with conventional patterns, and consider the potential of ‘works in movement’, in which composer (or designer) and performer (or knitter) become collaborators and co-creators. Having considered these examples, I explore whether a designer could offer support but not authorship. We can describe the design of works in movement as designing actions to be taken by others. Re-knitting requires us to extend this: designing actions to be taken by others, which involve those others – amateur knitters – designing. Several essays in the recent book, Open Design Now, offer ways of thinking about this ‘metadesign’ role. The metadesigner supports the amateur in making design decisions, and developing their skills and knowledge. I describe my experience of working as a metadesigner in the re-knitting project, and the online resource that I have created. I use writing on open source software, a prime example of ‘commons-based peer production’, to discuss the potential of opening up the re-knitting resource to the knitting community in the future. Finally, I discuss how the metadesign role differs from that of the ‘conventional’ knitwear designer-maker, in terms of design activities and relationships with objects and users

Shifting perceptions: the reknit revolution

An ongoing initiative seeks to encourage hand knitters to use their skills to rework existing knitted garments, extending product life and contributing to the 'domestic circular economy'. A pilot project demonstrated that inspiration, information and confirmation can help knitters to overcome barriers and embrace the challenge of reknitting

Reknit revolution: knitwear design for the domestic circular economy

An ongoing initiative seeks to encourage hand knitters to expand their practices to encompass reknitting: the reworking of existing knitted items using knit-based skills, techniques and knowledge. Reknitting offers potential benefits in terms of promoting repair and re-use by individual users within the domestic sphere, thereby contributing to the "domestic circular economy". Although reknitting was a common element of hand knitting practice in the past, the knowledge of how to open, alter, unravel and reknit has largely been lost. This gap in practice presents a fertile challenge for contemporary knitted textile design. A first phase of activity saw the initial development and testing of reknitting techniques suitable for the garments in our wardrobes today. This project demonstrated that it is possible to engage knitters with reknitting, but that support is needed to overcome barriers to participation and shift perceptions of what is both possible and desirable. Three interconnected elements of support are discussed: inspiration, information and confirmation. A second phase of activity, centered around an exhibition in a public gallery, aimed to communicate the techniques to a wider knitting community. Exhibits included physical garments, a large-scale infographic and a film; adaptable instructions were developed and published on a companion website. Through analysis of these exhibits and instructions, categories within each of the three elements of support were identified to create a more detailed taxonomy of support for domestic reknitting practice. Reflection on the progress of this initiative indicates the direction for future activity: raising broader awareness of reknitting, primarily via online channels, and structuring opportunities for participation to build a mutually supportive community of practice. It is anticipated that the taxonomy of support could be applied to other initiatives seeking to promote domestic circular economy activity

Fields of experience: young people's constructions of embodied identities

This thesis is concerned with issues relating to young people, identity and physical culture, and attempts to highlight how the comelex structure of young people's social experiences can influence their constructions of self. It follows a number of calls by various researchers for a multi-dimensional approach to the study of youth lifestyles (e. g. Hendry et al, 1996), and one that, while acknowledging societal influences on young people's practices, does not deny their potential to act agentically (e. g. Christensen & James, 2000). As such, taking into account the concerns expressed over the increasing pressures facing young people in contemporary society, and the problematisation of various youth behaviours, it examines the extent to which young people shape and are shaped by their experiences in a number of interrelating social contexts. The research upon which this account is based focuses on a notion of identity that is ephemeral, reflexive, and embodied, and examines the experiences of young people in five intersecting social sites that were identified from the literature as important contexts for individuals' constructions of identities: family, peers, school, media, and physical culture. These social arenas are likened to Bourdieu's notion of fields, and are perceived to be structured spaces in which the development of an appropriate habitus and the possession of relevant capital can help to determine an individual's practice and position within them. Data were generated through a series of focus group discussions with four groups of five young people (ten boys and ten girls) from three schools in tile Midlands. The young people were selected from a larger sample that had been surveyed and clustered in relation to their motivation to physical activity, and each group comprised an individual from each cluster. The focus group sessions involved semi-structured conversations in addition to a program of activity-based research tasks, and culminated in the creation of individual identity posters. The taped conversations and material infonnation generated through the focus group sessions were then collated, and a grounded theory approach was employed in the thematic analysis of tile data. A number of analytic strategies such as coding, memos, and conceptual mapping were utilised within this process, and, in association with a consideration of tile conceptual tools of field, habitus, practice, and capital, contributed to the development of theory. Within tile thesis, the five main analysis chapters presented the key themes in relation to each field, and highlighted the identity i work that the participants engaged in within each of these social sites. The chapters. map out the structure and practices of each field, and examine their influences on the young people's attempts to construct understandings of self. The final chapter of the thesis then attempts to summarise the findings of these previous analysis chapters, and examine them in relation to the central research questions that guided and underpinned the study. As such, the repetition of core themes, such as the management and presentation of self, a desire for autonomy and respect, and a tension within a dialect of conforinity and resistance, were identified as significant aspects of young people's social practices. Additionally, the evident overlaps between the different contexts indicated the complex configuration of fields within the experiences of young people. In relation to this issue, the final chapter focuses in particular on how the fields configured for the young people in relation to the field of physical culture, as this was identified in the study as a primary site for the construction of embodied identities. Having presented these key findings, the thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications for those working with and for young people, and for the design and implementation of youth policies, particularly in relation to the area of physical activity

Percolation in invariant Poisson graphs with i.i.d. degrees

Let each point of a homogeneous Poisson process in R^d independently be equipped with a random number of stubs (half-edges) according to a given probability distribution mu on the positive integers. We consider translation-invariant schemes for perfectly matching the stubs to obtain a simple graph with degree distribution mu. Leaving aside degenerate cases, we prove that for any mu there exist schemes that give only finite components as well as schemes that give infinite components. For a particular matching scheme that is a natural extension of Gale-Shapley stable marriage, we give sufficient conditions on mu for the absence and presence of infinite components