Co-knitting – Exploring Democratic Textile Threads 

In a time marked by polarization, ecological crisis, and the erosion of democratic dialogue, there is a growing need for new ways of meeting, creating, and thinking together. Textile practices have long fostered community, care, and shared action, yet their democratic potential remains underexplored within artistic research. Co-knitting – Exploring Democratic Textile Threads is an artistic research project that develops co-knitting as a relational and democratic method. Through open co-knitting workshops in public spaces, participants of all ages are invited to collaboratively work with reused materials and co-produce a shared textile artefact.

The project explores how co-knitting with threads and materials can nurture polyvocal dialogue, caring relations, and reflection on human and more-than-human agency. Its aim is to develop textile-relational methods that support democratic participation, shared responsibility, and greater awareness of how material resources are used and valued in contemporary society.

Participants in the project

Marie Ledendal,Textile Designer, and Senior Lecturer in Applied Visual Communication at Department of Communication, Lund University. She has a practice-based PhD in smart textiles. Her research is interdisciplinary, moving between artistic/practice-based design research and social science, in which she explores textile/fashion, art and place in the intersection of co-creation, communication and technologies, focusing on materialities, practices, and design methodology. Her often works collaborative through art-projects, as well as creative workshops. She exhibits nationally and internationally.

Charlotte Østergaard, Costume/fashion designer, textile artist, and artists researcher, affiliated at Malmö Theatre Academy, Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts, Lund University. She has an artistic research PhD in costume and performance. Her research lies in the intersections of crafting practices, hosting values, co-creative processes, performance, and participatory formats, focusing on practice and artistic methodologies that explores relationships between human bodies and non-human materialities. Østergaard has shown works at internationally curated exhibitions and at international festivals. She often works collaborative through art-projects, especially within performing art.