2023

Continuing Textile Practice with the Babushkas of Chornobyl – reflections on loss, emotional labour and working through the complexities of global catastrophes

KEY WORDS: textile practice, embroidery, co-design, cultural legacy, identity, pandemic, global politics, loss, grief, emotional labour

From the perspective of a textile practitioner, this illustrated reflective article, based on lived experience, demonstrates a continued co-design methodology and practice with the Babushkas of Chernobyl. Drawing on auto-ethnography I give an insight into personal emotions provoked by complexities of global political barriers including an attempt to overcome the anguish of enforced absences through creative means. Research progress is detailed through UK/Ukraine-specific challenges of both a pandemic and severe international unrest through 2020, 2021 and 2022, focusing on both textile heritage and self-settler identity through a contemporary co-design lens.

Of particular significance are two co-design sessions, appropriated in the midst of this international chaos. It is more important than ever that, during this current political climate and the loss of many Ukrainian cultural artefacts, a contemporary and new use of lost cultural motifs gives a voice to the declining minority of people currently living in extreme and difficult circumstances within the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Reflecting on the empathetic, experiential relationships I have built up over several years with the Babushkas, the article examines how these unexpected challenges prevented contact and how loss was navigated, through the stages of grief (Stroebe, Schut & Boerner, 2017).

The cost of traumatic global events to our relationships and the emotional labour involved in this work is confirmed and acknowledged. The contribution this article seeks to provide is to reveal detailed aspects of undertaking participatory research in challenging contexts, and during tragic global events. It offers an insight into how alternative approaches to making were conceived, revealing ways that research through design can raise awareness of the unimaginable challenges that have resulted in affective emotional labour, which is not often shared.