The Craftivist Collective Handbook: Projects, Stories and Methods for Your Gentle Protests

Twenty Gentle Protest craft projects to help you make a positive difference in our world.

If we want our world to be more beautiful, kind and fair, can we make our activism more beautiful, kind and fair? ’Gentle Protest’ is a unique methodology of strategic, compassionate and visually intriguing activism using handicrafts as a tool. Since its creation in 2009, the award-winning global Craftivist Collective has helped change laws, policies, hearts and minds around the world as well as expand the view of what activism can be.

Dreams inspire positive action, so stitch a Dream Cloud to hang up at home or work and prompt you to think past a problem to the solution. Sew a Gentle Nudge Label to help keep your conscience sharp and your spirit strong. Craft your own Mini Protest Banner to turn heads and influence change, or fly solidarity’s flag for those suffering as a result of the world’s injustices. Stitch a Handmade Hedgerow to champion one of the solutions to the climate crisis or if you are nervous about protesting in public or if there’s a ban on public rallies where you live, let a doll speak your truth by creating a Toy Protest.

This handbook is for everyone, wherever you are in the world: whether you are a skilled crafter or a burnt-out activist, an introvert, highly sensitive person, or struggling with anxiety or overwhelm. These 20 projects and tools use the slow, soothing and thoughtful process of craft to help channel feelings of sadness, anger or powerlessness into proactive, encouraging effective actions to help make hope possible.

Sarah P. Corbett is an award-winning activist, author and Ashoka Fellow. She founded the global Craftivist Collective in 2019 after demand from around the world from people wanting to join in her projects and events. An introvert born and raised in a low-income area of Liverpool in the 1980s, she saw the effect inequality could have on communities first hand and took part in local and global campaigns. Working with diverse organisations from Save the Children to The Climate Coalition, Crafts Council and Maker Faires, Victoria and Albert Museum to Secret Cinema, she helped to create the new Girlguiding UK Craftivism Badge and is passionate about bringing loving effective activism into new spaces to reach new audiences. She lives in London.