Building a Community for Community Art and Crafts at Worldcons and elsewhere
Over the last couple of months, I ran a community project for the Glasgow in 2024 Worldcon bid that asked fans and supporters of the bid to create an armadillo in any shape or form they could imagine. I was floored by the variety and creativity shown in the entries, and we did end up with a whole alphabet worth of armadillos!
Go admire all of them in the Gallery of Armadillos on the Glasgow blog.
Here are my contributions:
~Constanze
Last year I got involved with the bid to bring the 2024 Worldcon to Glasgow, and it won’t surprise anybody that part of my contribution is coming up with crafty ideas. We’re inviting people to create an armadillo in any craft they choose, give it a name and post it on social media. Here’s my contribution, named Berta, created using the excellent crochet pattern Miki Dennis made just for us:
I had loads of fun putting this project together, please look at my post on the Glasgow in 2024 blog for all the details on how you can join us!
~ Constanze
Organized by Jan Bass and Monique Lubberink, CoNZealand had a lovely community craft project planned: Yarnbombing along the routes connecting the different venues in Wellington. I posted about this earlier this year. Then 2020 happened, and CoNZealand had to go virtual. The project pivoted to yarnbombing wherever the contributors lived and sending in pictures and/or video of the results. We certainly could do with a bit more colour in our lives this year!
We ended up with a lovely display of everybody’s contributions in the Virtual Exhibits Hall at CoNZealand. With the kind permission of the contributors involved, I’d like to share the fun with all of you. Click on the pictures to see a close-up and title!
I ended up being more involved with this project than I intended, and had loads of fun seeing everybody’s work! If you contributed to Yarnbomb@CoNZealand and would like to see your work included in this post, please contact me.
Nobody knows what will happen between now and the end of July, when CoNZealand is scheduled to happen. That doesn’t stop me from making some steampunk gears for yarnbombing CoNZealand, though.
Here’s what I made:
These are three different gears, and I’m planning to make a few more. They could be sewn together to make a garland, for example. If you want to play along, I prepared the instructions as a PDF download. I’d love to see what you come up with using those instructions!
CoNZealand, which is this year’s Worldcon taking place from July 29 to August 2 in Wellington, New Zealand, just announced a community art project I’m very excited about. Unfortunately I won’t be able to be there, but I’ll make sure to request pictures for documentation purposes!
CoNZealand members are invited to help yarnbomb the routes between the different venues of the convention. Pieces can reflect the overall theme of the convention “steampunk spaceship to the stars” or a personal fandom. Find out all the details on the CoNZealand website. There’s also a Facebook group you can join.
I’m looking forward to seeing what people come up with for this project! I might even contribute something from afar – there’s that idea of steampunky gears in Irish crochet lace that I didn’t have time to implement for Dublin 2019, after all.
Loncon 3 was the 2014 Worldcon in London, UK. The Loncon 3 Pigeons were a community project that primarily happened before the convention. Here’s some information on the project, provided by Shana Worthen:
London has pigeons, obviously. That connection was turned into a fun project that got people to make their own pigeons pre-convention. The resulting pigeons acted as Loncon 3 ambassadors around the world, being photographed on their travels. The proof of this lives on their Pinterest page. Pictures of the pigeons on their travels were part of Loncon’s display at LoneStarCon 3 the year before Loncon 3.
Serena Culfeather, who ran the Loncon 3 Art Show together with John Wilson, designed the pattern for the pigeon. She made it available to others, and also put together kits. There was a pigeon making workshop at the 2014 Eastercon, where lots of people started their pigeons, finished them at home and sent them back to the convention.
At the convention itself, the pigeons became part of the Guest of Honour display for Robin Hobb/Megan Lindholm, which featured a mannequin dressed as the Wizard from Wizard of the Pigeons, sitting on a park bench. The pigeons congregated at the Wizard’s feet. That display was put together by Farah Mendlesohn.
Here’s Serena Culfeather’s account of the project:
We had four Ambassador Pigeons in red, white and blue who went to different parts of the world for adventures. I made a leather, steampunk version and also a Pearly King version to give to Robin Hobb. We made up pigeon packs where I basically got a kit together with EVERYTHING you would need and these proved popular. I expected that people would be more inclined to make pigeons if they had more than a downloadable pattern. Some packs had pre-cut out pieces and others squares of felt. I like working with felt and I think it’s an easy medium for all levels of skill to work with. It was also a deliberately simple pattern and by creating it myself I avoided any copyright issues.
Having quite a few pigeons already made at the start seemed to encourage people to make them and at a few conventions ahead of Loncon we had workshops where you could make or start to make a pigeon or two. This worked well and inspired people to be quite creative with colours and styles as they saw what others were doing. I took pigeons with me everywhere and at one convention they came along in a small wicker pet carrier!
Everyone likes to show off their creations so inviting people to send in photos of their pigeon worked well too. This was the The idea behind the Ambassador pigeons was based on the concept of Flat Stanley. The more that are shown off, the more people want to join in. In some cases, pigeon makers were too fond of their pigeons to bring them along!
The Raksura Colony Tree 