Forging And Belonging: Researching children's social relations and Imagined futures through Crafting in rural West Africa (FABRIC)

FABRIC addresses three research gaps: the changing value of crafting in West Africa; children's modalities of craft learning and its sociocultural value; and how children in 'middle childhood' imagine their futures in a rapidly changing world. The economic value of crafting in West Africa is changing in two directions: there is falling demand for artisanal crafts in preference to cheaper industrial and second-hand alternatives; yet tourist and art markets are opening new markets for crafts that may re-invigorate the sector. The cultural and epistemological value of crafting continues to be highly esteemed in rural communities and within government policy on the creative and cultural industries. Crafters have adapted their practice to incorporate new materials, including recycling scrap metal and textiles. Growing interest in sustainability and circular economies is also stimulating policy interest in artisanal craft. Crafting is gendered and is often organised by caste-like rules that attach status groups and/or ethnic groups to specific crafts. Therefore, crafting is also bound up with how social belonging and social relations between castes, ethnicities, faiths, and genders are expressed. In this highly labile context children's craft learning takes on particular importance for understanding how social belonging is instantiated in material culture and how changes in the organisation of material culture create space for new ways of imagining social belonging and what the impacts of these new ways are on how the future is imagined and comes into existence. The impact of the transformation of craft practices on children's social belonging now and in the future is a critically important question because how children in West Africa, in which 40 per cent of the population is under 15 years of age, instantiate social belonging and imagine their futures will fundamentally impact on the prospects for economic growth and local and regional political stability. FABRIC will extend and enrich the archaeology and anthropology of personhood through the investigation of how children's social belonging is manifested in and through material culture craft practices in Benin and Senegal. This will contribute to new ways of valuing craft cultures and expanding children's future imaginaries. FABRIC's research is relevant to several of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) including Gender Equality (5), Decent Work and Economic Growth (8) Sustainable Cities and Communities, especially 11.4 '[s]trengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world's cultural and natural heritage'. FABRIC deploys innovative methods to advance our understanding of how children navigate their social relations and belonging in periods of rapid economic and cultural change. It integrates Birkbeck's research on material and visual cultures and the political economy of childhood with University of Bayreuth's research on social belonging and social relations in Africa; and advances collaboration between Europe (Germany, UK) and Africa (Benin, Senegal) through integrating the shared interest of the partners in documenting and protecting Indigenous Knowledge and its cultural expression. In addition to research papers published in peer-reviewed journals a PhD thesis and two MA dissertations, FABRIC will produce the first documentary film on crafting and children's social belonging; a new touring exhibition of artefacts and photographs produced during the project, provisionally titled World-making through craft-making. It will present data analysis in other innovative ways including the design and production in collaboration with weavers involved in FABRIC's research of a textile that weaves a representation of the data analysis.