Grace is beauty, under remorseless pressure.
When I sat down to write this article, these words came to mind – to connect to the lived experience of Dzaleka refugee camp now, is to be put in touch with a form of brutal grace, it stays with you. Dzaleka is a refugee camp in Malawi housing over 60,000 refugees and migrants, predominantly from the Democratic Republic of Congo as well as Burundi, Rwanda and other nationalities. Centre for Sustainable Fashion, longtime collaborator Deepa Patel and I, have been working with the makers of Dzaleka Arts Lab (DAL), based in Dzaleka refugee camp, for 2 years now. They first self-formed to create an identity for staying together beyond our co-created workshops, and to become, as they now are, a formally recognised refugee-led organisation.
In between our physical time in Dzaleka refugee camp, we work together over WhatsApp, often across 4 languages, and in relationship and response to the extreme nature of their lives, lives that with the impacts of the Trump Presidency, have become ever more precarious.
At a time when the UK Government has cut foreign aid and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding has also been cut, along with it, hopes of resettlement, the theme they chose to respond to was 'Home'. The resulting ‘Pockets of Love’ is in practice, a work of resistance and innovation in the form of a creative response to a scam the group encountered when buying bails of second-hand clothes; likely, originally sent from our part of the world (the UK) to theirs, these garments were to be redesigned into diverse new pieces, as an output of the Lab.
The group had expected to receive enough material to make many artefacts; but on discovering that the market trader had sold them the tops of the jeans only - the legs being sold to someone else - the remaining usable amount meant the group had to reimagine what to do. They noticed that pockets were the only plentiful parts available to them, and so over many weeks, they began to stitch them all together around a central embroidery, symbolising multiple feelings of ‘Home’.
Experienced through the physical and communal act of making the piece, as it grew, its weight and size became a unique blanket, delivering a sense of collective healing from shared trauma. The finished piece perpetuated surprise conversations to inspire making relationships across continents; makers from very different cultures and life circumstances, who may otherwise never meet, or connect, nor know of each other’s creative lives.
Within our ongoing and reciprocal passing of textile-based projects between our students here at London College of Fashion (LCF) and DAL, the makers realised that this piece could also be a novel way to communicate with others, and so they began to write and bury secret messages within the pockets, sharing (for our students to discover) the nature of their lives now in their own words.
In November 2024, we brought the 'Pockets of Love' piece back to LCF and with the course leader, Alice Richardson, co-wrote a brief for the students of the MA Fashion Textiles Technologies (MAFTT) course, to imagine and create their own relational response to it. Crucially, the conditions for design and making mirrored those in Dzaleka; so, working only with found materials reimagined, and to make no assumptions of availability of electricity, water, or data.
Alice shares the enrichment experienced by the students:
This method of creative communication, through making and response has opened a new way of conversing and connecting people from all different backgrounds, ages and countries. By challenging the MAFTT students to slow down their craft processes it has reconnected students to hand techniques.
Through having to use found materials that surround the students in their daily lives, the students have become more resourceful, made connections and friendships through foraging materials. Overall, I have witnessed a freedom of creativity which fosters more innovative responses.
By getting the students to capture their making process, it means anything made can also be taught to and with the refugees and enhance both the students and refugees’ methods of working and valuing their practices.
Haoling He, MAFTT LCF student, reflects on working in this way, with the same limitations as DAL members but ultimately finding freedom for expression:
As a designer, I hadn’t stitched anything by hand for ages. When I had to make the tie without any electronic tools, I felt this wonderful sense of happiness, satisfaction, and calm that comes from creating something with my own two hands. That moment was so precious, and I’m really grateful to Pockets of Love for giving me the chance to experience it again.
We began by exploring the piece together and reading the hidden messages. And to ground our imaginations and get a sense of where each of us starts, as we look inside ourselves before creating anything new, we considered a question:
Why make anything at all?
The following answers have emerged over time and have resonated with both the makers in Dzaleka and our own students since:
To express ourselves – to use our imagination.
To share love, show care – whether that be home making, cooking or other forms of making and care for our families.
To have something/a gift to share with the world; something to be known for, something to trade, or sell.
To be in flow, meditate, or to relax and be at ease (suspend time).
To create tools to better life in some practical way.
To learn a new skill, or perfect an existing one (10,000 hours rule).
The students worked over 6 weeks and the final pieces are beautiful and potent with creative surprise – continuing our design reciprocity, these pieces are coming with us back to Dzaleka, where the work will prompt new questions and inspire another creative response from DAL. LCF student, Zhenni He, shares their experience and reflections of this mutual way of working:
By making this lamp, I seem to be able to feel that my connection with the refugees has deepened, because in the process of making the lamp, I have been wondering who will receive this gift and whether he or she will be happy? Could my gift help him or her? I have something to think about what the person who received my lamp is like. Will he or she feel less lonely because of my work?
Yiying Zhu, MAFTT LCF student, speaks to the distance felt between people in divergent places, often perpetuated by media, and how The Pockets of Love project narrowed this space between to allow for empathy and relation:
It was a good way for me to understand the world and different groups of people. I had known what and why caused the situation of refugees and what they are suffering. I never expect that I would connect to the people from [Dzaleka] refugee camp, it made me feel the world doesn't only exist in the news of the media, panic and inequity is super real and closed [sic] to us. Besides that, I learned how to make use of the limited resource [sic] and tried to think about how to find an alternative material when something is not accessible.
Wanru Zhao, MAFTT LCF student, conveys their unexpected learnings and nuanced understandings gained:
I collected clothing labels from different charity shops, I realized [sic] that these small tags carry hidden stories—traces of past owners, different languages, and even cultural nuances. What surprised me the most was how these often-overlooked elements could become a symbol of human connection. Additionally, through the hand-stitching process, I gained a deeper appreciation for the tactile experience of fabric and craftsmanship. This project also made me reflect on the unnoticed discomfort these labels bring and how small details in clothing can affect our daily experiences.
As the significant pressures of camp life, continue, it has been as important to think about how works created might be monetised as well as raise a public awareness of DAL. To that end, the ‘Pockets of Love’ project is now a part of a Dzaleka Arts Lab (DAL) website, created by our film making collaborator, David Betteridge, in November 2024. The site shares all outputs to date and is linked to an arts sales platform (ZORA), thus also creating the beginnings of a new online opportunity for livelihood creation for the group.
Since the completion of the physical piece, AI has also been trained through the DAL story and images of both the making process and finished object, as a way to experiment and generate new digital visualisations and symbols - these will also be added to the above sales platform.
Funds raised through a DAO (Decentralised, autonomous, organisation) are sustaining DAL to create further works in collaboration with us, whilst continuing to inform a decolonised curriculum and knowledge exchange between us all.
Siyu, MAFTT LCF student, comments on the connective nature of this work, work that moves beyond borders and barriers:
This project made me feel that textiles can also be a bridge for people to communicate and express themselves.
KànJiàn, Vanessa, MAFTT LCF student, reveals what they enjoyed most about this reciprocal relationship with DAL and making, 'The slow progress of making is really relaxing, also to me, collecting waste yarn while imagining how our friends far way can see our creative journey is really romantic and poetic thing to do.' In their 'Threads of Hope’ poem, written at the end of the ‘Pockets of Love’ project, poet and DAL executive board member, Namad, highlights how shared compassion can lead to flourishing transformations for all:
THREADS OF HOPE
In a realm where strangers intertwine,
Hands unite, creating a design,
Crafts emerge from love’s embrace,
A hopeful tapestry finds its place.
We bridge the gaps with kindness spread,
Helping each other, where dreams are fed,
As creativity blooms in vibrant light,
Artists gather, igniting the night.
Sharing knowledge, we stand as one,
A nurturing space where dreams are spun,
Self-awareness binds our hearts,
Opportunities flourish, and joy imparts.
Ideas collide, new techniques arise,
In this community, wisdom flies,
Transforming the small into something grand,
Together we create with artist's hand.
So let us strive, connect, and grow,
In this embrace, our passions flow,
A brighter future, together we sway,
In a world where art lights the way.
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