The cold days of winter offer a great opportunity to enjoy an indoor activity. Have you been meaning to learn how to knit or crochet? This January, Kansas City based artist Ben Wills will offer free fiber lessons in Social Stitchery!

By learning a variety of stitches, sample textile blocks will be combined into winter scarves for a local Lawrence charity organization. Ben Wills will present this project at the Lawrence Arts Center as an extension of previous work, Sick Scarves, a social stitching project to generate knit items for the Topeka Rescue Mission. In addition to providing cold weather assistance, Wills intends for the project to generate a forum for community advocacy:

This project creates not only an environment to learn a new craft and create an object for warmth for someone in need, but an environment where people can discuss poverty, and why it’s important that we act now to help.  The percentage of people living below the poverty line fluctuates every year, however the opportunity for change in this community is constant.  By continuing to generate projects that challenge the way people interact with their community, poverty, social justice, or politics, artists have a substantial ability to redirect ever shifting public conversation and opinion.

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