Children's artistic expressions : weaving the threads of cultural diversity

Al-Sadu is a traditional weaving technique, which has historically been practised by Bedouin women living in the Arabian Peninsula. Al-Sadu weaving performs a dual role both as a functional craft, which provides nomadic communities with the physical resources that they require to survive in the desert, and an aesthetic means of expressing tribal and communal identities. The researcher is a practitioner of weaving and was a teacher of art in Kuwait. This study explores the utility of and engagement with Al-Sadu in greater depth. The study incorporates a mini-ethnographic research design underwritten by the philosophy of practice-based research. The study aims to identify and describe how children in two differing cultural contexts - the UK and Kuwait - respond to the 'Woven Dialogues' sculpture and express themselves through art and woven materials. 78 children aged between 9 and 11 were recruited from two UK schools and one Kuwaiti school. Data were collected through drawings, weavings, verbal reflections, captions, unstructured interviews, and observations, and were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The findings revealed five principal themes including: (1) Gender and Weaving; (2) Sameness and Difference; (3) Global and Local Cultures; (4) Feelings and Emotions; and (5) Political Consciousness. The study contributes to the existing evidence base, which has shown how engagement with art and tactile devices can stimulate children's agency, expression and participation. Reflections upon practice-based research suggest that weaving, such as Al-Sadu, is best conceptualised as a form of embodied knowledge where truths are experienced at a primordial level through material practices. Weaving thus provides an ideal space for the tactical reversal of hegemonic ideas, practices and habitual ways of being and knowing.