The following article is a piece I wrote for the Roots and Stitches collective. The website has since been removed so I have decided to share my opinions and experience of being a person of colour in the knitting and fiber arts world.
The article was first published in March 2023, and since, I have had a lot more experience of being a more active member of the crafting and fiber arts community as I have attending more knitting shows- that did seem to make more of a commitment to diversity and inclusion and I have started a Youtube channel focused on sharing my makes, but overall, while I have taken steps to involve myself more in the community, I would say, the opinions expressed below remain unchanged.
People of Colour and Representation in Knitting.
As someone who regularly consumes knitting content, I would like to call for more visibility for people of colour as makers, designers and content creators. We exist. We have a love for fibre arts, but we should all aspire to inspire an equally diverse new generation of fibre crafters to learn new skills and form inclusive crafting communities. Here’s why.
Crafting is no longer the exclusive domain for the time-rich and privileged. It’s well documented that the pandemic has meant creative hobbies like knitting, for many, have been a source of meditation and solace at a time when the world was falling apart. We learned leisure pursuits that promote feelings of wellbeing and healing for the individual, benefit society and should be something to which everyone has access.
Why representation matters
As a Black woman who loves gardening almost as much as knitting, I know that I can tune into BBC’s Gardener’s World on any given week and see Arit Anderson, Poppy Okotcha or Advolly Richmond, for example – stellar ladies of colour, literally diversifying the landscape of televised gardening. Gardening itself has only recently developed into a more inclusionary space in the media, presumably to appeal to youthful urban dwellers, while still catering to their traditionally suburban – and white – audiences. The show is all the richer for it. Positioning diverse women of colour as leaders and participants in areas where in the past, they have been marginalized and erased, is a small but powerful measure.
Knitting, however, remains a predominately white space. The 2023 Wool and Folk debacle notwithstanding. I have seen many, on the usual channels like Reddit and Twitter, use the bin fire that was the chaos at the Wool and Folk festival in New York as an excuse to revel in stereotypes and overt racism because the organizer is an African American woman. One high profile negative portrayal should not represent the majority, just as one bad apple would not be used to determine the quality of the bushel. I would not have had to use such an analogy, if the organizer of the yarn show had been white.
In any case, Knitters of colour have created channels and safe spaces to share anecdotes of mistreatment and racism in the mainstream knitting community and the stories told hurt my soul. Thankfully, I don’t personally have any harrowing tales, but I have visited yarn festivals where I was the only person of colour in attendance and that’s pretty isolating. For full disclosure, I’m no stranger to exclusively white spaces. Admittedly, some of my interests are considered fairly ‘white’. I like thrash metal and University Challenge for example, so there’s that.
But being a person of colour at a yarn festival is not like being the only Black girl in the mosh pit. For years at metal concerts, I stood tall with confidence that my race is well-represented and influential in guitar music by virtuosos like Jimi Hendrix or Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Representation is important. It is a position of privilege when representation is a given and something one needs not consider. Little to no BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of colour) visibility in knitting nor efforts for inclusion at any level is something that makes me feel like an interloper in a community I hold dear. It’s important to have these conversations because the silence of a glaring problem feels at best, indifferent and at worst, hostile.
The existence of groups like the Black Girl Knits Club is one of those safe spaces organizing knit nights in London and outreaches into their communities encouraging young women of colour into craft. The hashtag “diversknitty” on social media and fibre artist Lorna Hamilton Brown’s distinction awarded MA thesis ‘Myth: Black People Don’t Knit – the importance of art and oral histories for documenting the experiences of black knitters’, confirms this is a conversation that needs to be had but currently, people of colour are the only ones having it.
Redressing the balance
People of colour knit and create social media content for the wider crafting community yet they do not appear on YouTube suggestions despite my ravenous appetite for knitting content. I preface internet searches with the word “Black” to find BIPOC creators. For members of marginalized groups, representation matters. Representation has been shown to increase self-esteem. To see oneself reflected in the visibility of others from similar backgrounds or ethnic groups shows us what is possible for ourselves. We can not be what we can not see. I can attest to this from feelings of pride I felt when I learnt that the abolitionist Sojourner Truth was not just a butt-kicking women’s rights activist, she was a knitter as well.
Some dismiss affirmative action but honestly, this is not a conversation for those people. This is a call for allyship, inclusion and to address unconscious bias. When we demonstrate preference for only what is familiar, it becomes normalized. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else. Not necessarily because “normal” is better but because it is the status quo. This is the working of unconscious racial bias as well, simultaneously reducing rights and opportunities for members of already marginalized groups. When everyone knits the same patterns by the same designers it may not necessarily be because those patterns are better but merely because we are more exposed to them. How ethnically diverse, for example are the crafters you follow or the producers of yarns and patterns you purchase?
An Inclusive Space
There is great strength in collaboration. If we all operated from a position of abundance, we could make room for each other and everyone could have a proverbial seat at the knitting table. Help advocate for diversity and give other creators a chance by being intentional about widening your exposure to makers of different backgrounds and ethnicities. If you like their work, recommend them to friends. Be welcoming to a person of colour at your local knit night, your yarn stores and crafting communities. It’s a drop in the ocean of systemic oppression and marginalization but it would matter to the individual and that’s where change really begins, pushing us a little closer to equity and community.
In the not-so-distant future, to a little black girl who wants to take up knitting or crochet, it will mean there is little doubt that she too is represented. She’ll go to YouTube without having to preface searches for representation with “black”. She’ll type in her craft and will be greeted with diverse, talented knitters and content creators and she’ll think, this is my tribe. This is a space of acceptance, and I am welcome.
All Homesteading 
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this subject. I’m not able to comment other than to say that as a BBC licence fee payer it’s good to see that women of colour are being appropriately involved in Gardener’s World. A step in the right direction.
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I wholeheartedly agree! The road however, is long. Thanks for commenting!
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