Abstract
Visible mending is increasingly recognized as both a functional and creative craft practice and a form of material intelligence, where knowledge emerges through tactile engagement. This paper adds an additional layer that visible mending in community, where the act of mending is also visible, functions as a materially grounded practice of ongoing care through which knowledge and learning are distributed across people, textiles, and time. Drawing on a multi‑sited qualitative study, including a nine‑month global mending cohort, a visible mending workshop, and interviews with experienced menders, the paper examines how care aesthetics helps clarify the social and epistemic dimensions of textile repair and its connection to concepts of aging. Framed through care aesthetics, the analysis shows the role of materials as active participants in aesthetic‑care relations through embodied engagement with aging textiles over time. Menders describe “listening” to worn garments, responding to the damage, and learning through reciprocal adjustment between hand, textile, and each other, forming a commons of care developed through a multi-modal approach. The findings further demonstrate how visible mending links textile and bodily aging as interconnected temporal processes, reframing aging as a shared, relational experience. Menders draw parallels between mended garments and their own shifting bodies, interpreting visible repair as an aesthetic and ethical stance that affirms change, endurance, and accumulated histories. By framing visible mending as a social textile, this paper expands understandings of care and textile knowledge to include embodied knowing, shared attentiveness, and the temporal agency of materials and bodies.
Keywords
Visible mending; Care aesthetics; Intergenerational learning; Commoning; Aging
DOI
10.21606/TI-2026.111
Citation
Bennett, S.,and Ferri, G.(2026) Textile Commons of Care: Intergenerational Mending and Temporalities, in Jane Scott, Sophie Skach, and Rebecca Stewart (eds.), Textile Intersections 2026, 17-18 September 2026, London, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/TI-2026.111
Conference Track
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Included in
Textile Commons of Care: Intergenerational Mending and Temporalities
Visible mending is increasingly recognized as both a functional and creative craft practice and a form of material intelligence, where knowledge emerges through tactile engagement. This paper adds an additional layer that visible mending in community, where the act of mending is also visible, functions as a materially grounded practice of ongoing care through which knowledge and learning are distributed across people, textiles, and time. Drawing on a multi‑sited qualitative study, including a nine‑month global mending cohort, a visible mending workshop, and interviews with experienced menders, the paper examines how care aesthetics helps clarify the social and epistemic dimensions of textile repair and its connection to concepts of aging. Framed through care aesthetics, the analysis shows the role of materials as active participants in aesthetic‑care relations through embodied engagement with aging textiles over time. Menders describe “listening” to worn garments, responding to the damage, and learning through reciprocal adjustment between hand, textile, and each other, forming a commons of care developed through a multi-modal approach. The findings further demonstrate how visible mending links textile and bodily aging as interconnected temporal processes, reframing aging as a shared, relational experience. Menders draw parallels between mended garments and their own shifting bodies, interpreting visible repair as an aesthetic and ethical stance that affirms change, endurance, and accumulated histories. By framing visible mending as a social textile, this paper expands understandings of care and textile knowledge to include embodied knowing, shared attentiveness, and the temporal agency of materials and bodies.