2022 theme: Creative communities of practice
I generally don’t make resolutions. I attempted the Make Nine challenge a couple of times, but selecting 9 projects to complete is wayyy too specific for me, even when I keep my goals as general as possible. This year, I’m trying something a little different: I’m setting a theme/intention to kickstart 2022 and seeing where that takes me. I hope to end up someplace completely unexpected and impossible to imagine at the end of this year!
My overall theme is to participate in creative communities of practice. Or, said another way: less social media, more social learning.
Learning, together.
I love the idea of a community of practice: folks that rally together around a common interest, but have different abilities, backgrounds, experiences, and levels of involvement. That diversity leads to interesting ideas and explorations.
I'm starting off 2022 with three new creative communities:
Maiwa's Journey Into Indigo: I signed up for an 8-week course that explores creating different types of indigo vats and using them to decorate textiles. It's a self-paced course, but new content is released each week and you're encouraged to keep pace. I find the indigo dyeing the hardest and least fun part of my ikat explorations; I'm hoping this group will improve my mindset... if I still feel this way in March, at least I gave it a solid try!
Black Sheep Handweavers Guild: I joined a weaving guild! I thought this would be a great way to meet other weavers, and local ones at that. They have monthly programming, study groups (communities of purpose!), a guild library, and more. I'm so excited about the possibilities. I've already attended one meetup, checked out several books from the guild library, and met two other folks who coincidentally are also working through Mary Zicafoose's ikat book.
Beatrice Collective: I splurged last year and bought myself a custom body scan dress form (!). I can't wait to share more about her and show how she compares to my current dress form. They have a community for Beatrice owners with events and activities and that sound like a great way to get back into sewing clothing and perfecting fit.
This is plenty for the first half of the year. (I'm also embracing communities of practice in my professional life, and have a few going on there... 😄) I'm going to be busy, but in an invigorating way. Social learning is my favorite type of learning.
A note on social media...
Above, I mentioned that I'm also trying to reduce my use of social media. I did this last January — no IG for a month — and that led to me learning about new resources and restarting this blog in earnest. I'm proud (and surprised, to be honest!) that I have more blog posts for 2021 than Instagram posts. I hope to build on that trend for this year, starting with another IG-free January.
I met some truly lovely people via the indie sewing community on Instagram, so in a sense, I found community there. But the more I engaged with that group, the more I noticed a narrowness in my focus and hobbies. Everyone I met was sewing similar things, thinking in similar ways, etc. (It's so weird to think about — you hear about this happening with political views, but it totally happened in a sneaky, insidious way with my hobbies!) The algorithms make it easy to fall into these silos and echo chambers, and it's all underlined with an element of consumerism and the need to constantly produce and share. I forgot how much I like to do things for me, even if no one sees them.
Anyway, I could go on for paragraphs like this! But I'll step down from my soapbox, and just end with the fact that social media feels unhealthy and non-substantive for me. I look forward to participating in the three communities above, and seeing where that takes me.