Purls of Wisdom: crafting to raise awareness of the role of geoscience in climate change

Purls of Wisdom is a programme that utilises crafting to raise awareness of Earth’s changing climate. Specifically, the programme frames climate change as a local issue and aims to make this important topic accessible to people of all ages. Purls of Wisdom tackles these issues through fibre crafting as fibre crafting often utilises locally sourced fibres (e.g. wool from local sheep) and can be sustainably dyed (e.g. dyes from local plants). The Purls of Wisdom event took place in August 2022. The event was co-created through a partnership between the Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre in Applied Geosciences (iCRAG) and local community leaders and fibre crafters in a small rural village in County Galway, Ireland. For the event, researchers from institutions across Ireland travelled to rural Galway for a day of crafting and climate conversations. The key aim of the event was to facilitate organic conversations between the participants and the researchers. By creating a safe, non-judgemental space at the crafting tables, participants and researchers were able to have conversations about climate change research and how participants could make a difference in their local environment, and the researchers and participants could work together to co-create crafts that reflected these discussions.  Together, the participants and researchers created hand woven fabric that showed the Irish climate stripes, a series of needle felted squares that depicted everything from Ireland in the past to geothermal energy and a collaborative wall hanging that displayed Galway’s climate change over the past 80 years.

Evaluation data from the event suggests that participants’ knowledge about the science of climate change has increased, and they feel that geoscience has an important role in combatting climate change and in their everyday lives. Selected quotes include: “(Purls of Wisdom) opened my eyes, I’m interested to learn more about geoscience.” “Most definitely geoscience has a huge role to play in climate change going forward.” “Soil is more important than I thought.” and “I believe it is very helpful to incorporate the science and everyday life, including crafts, in presentations re-climate change so as to engage more people in the discussion of this topic.”

The Purls of Wisdom event specifically targeted retirees as retirees have a huge desire to take part in climate initiatives, but initiatives for their age groups are lacking. In creating the event with community leaders (of retirement age), we ensured the event was suitable for them. Furthermore, some participants brought along their children and grandchildren which encouraged cross-generational learning. 22 local people attended the pilot event.

Purls of Wisdom has been funded through the EGU Outreach Grant, 2020 and we hope to showcase some of the climate crafts created at EGU 2023.