Littlemoor Wishes

Littlemoor Wishes was a £12,500 Arts Council funded open-call commission to produce an art project with the Littlemoor Community in Dorset. The project emerged through discussion with road builders and local councillors, examining the ways in which local people make visual and narrative connections across the large physical division within their community, which marked the arrival of the new Relief Road. Responding to a renascent interest in craft as it relates to socially engaged art practice the project involves craft based traditions and activist practices, which employ tactics of ‘craftivism’ (a term coined by Betsy Greer combining craft and activism), placing an emphasis on interaction and participation in the wider social realm. The final outcome resulted in three beaded tie clips and laser cut neoprene tags in a small transparent clip seal bag, individually posted to each 2400 Littlemoor households. A pen was provided for collective community writings onto the tags and instructions to tie them to the temporary metal Heras fencing skirting the four-mile perimeter of the Relief Road works. The tradition of coming together to make, particularly in terms of textiles as a group endeavour (such as quilting) is co-opted within Littlemoor Wishes, building on previous projects using collective wishes and questions. Subverting the usual praxis of commercial craft kits, Littlemoor Wishes adopts the relational and social nature of crafted objects that disrupt codes of consumerism. Accessed through the constructed Heras fencing the individual voice is re-valued as a creative gesture against a shifting backdrop of road building, igniting collective ownership during a period of significant environmental change within the community. The work became a form of witnessing everyday people’s concerns, and is re-staged for the format of a publication of the same name, University of Huddersfield Press [paperback ISBN 978 186218 082 6; 57 pages].