Textile Craft as Empowerment: Shared research and craft activities around textiles in museums

Focusing on museums, this article illustrates how textile crafts can become a source for scholarly inquiry and can enhance more inclusive practices at museums. The empirical data comprises four museum-related projects conducted since 2017 focusing on textile craft and creativity with women in Denmark, particularly women of refugee, migrant, or second-generation migrant background. Through these cases, we unravel the potential of textile crafts as a medium and encounter for engagement in museums within a societal context, both as a professional outlook, an education, a cultural heritage, an object of research, and a pastime for pleasure and socializing. The common thread—our academic quest—is how, when, and why textile craft is entwined with female empowerment, and how textile craft, as a shared community action, can empower and represent an opportunity for museums to reach new audiences as well as use the museum space in new ways.