2025

Making relationships: the value of dialogical practice with a lost community in the Chornobyl exclusion zone

KEY WORDS: place, loss, heritage, legacy, value, dialogue, relationships, emotion, practice This practice-based research examines the embroidery practices of a dying community, the Babushkas of the Chornobyl exclusion zone, using an epistemology of constructionism. Through the making of close relationships, I aim to contemporise their textile history in order that their voices be heard, and their stitched legacy preserved.

The research asks, how can the making of embroidery and related artefacts be used to facilitate enduring bonds, preserve intangible cultural heritage, and re-enliven creativity? Through interpretivism and a series of recurrent, informal and sometimes creative engagements with the Babushkas, this research draws on and culminates in a kinship with the remaining community through shared textile practice. The research used friendship and interconnecting methods to understand this relationship and to make new work with, and in relation to the Babushkas. Flexibility of creative approach became a necessity to continue this work within the unforeseen contexts of a pandemic and war. It was ultimately developed through dynamic methods, notes on semi-structured interviews, making sessions, exhibitions, and reciprocal friendships (in Ukraine and the UK).

Made artefacts developed from this long- term research embody a mutual, relational context and visceral journey. The outcomes form a series of emotionally durable objects; exhibition artworks, storytelling scarves and commercial embroidery kits which, underpinned by the notion of friendship, extended the dialogue between researcher and Babushka. Knowledge emerged in relation to notions of value and interlocking themes of place, memory, emotion, and practice. I articulate the dialogue of this journey and conclude that emotional intimacy can re-enliven creativity within complex contexts.

The significance of this research, in the context of the rapid loss of this community are our interpersonal connections, which generated themes of value, love and dialogue, shown through an emotionally-led practice, underpinned by a rare friendship with an obsolescent people, and negotiating barriers of place and global complexities.