Quilting Across Prison Walls

This chapter explores how the field of social practice can intersect with ethics of care and well-being, especially when making happens with and for others to raise awareness of the neoliberal project of criminalization and incarceration. The authors examine how socially engaged art can contribute to the practice of art therapy and vice versa, using an ethics of care methodology to contextualize “radical empathy” in public crafting spaces. Elaborating on the Inheritance: Quilting Across Prison Walls project, the authors argue that craft and its performative function in public spaces not only has the potential to produce socially inclusive dialogue and increase awareness of structural inequity, but also has the ability to challenge the contradictions of crafting to highlight structural injustices.