Visible Mending
Emotional repair through wool
Directed by Samantha Moore
Visible Mending is a short animated documentary about the ways we repair ourselves through knitting, even when we can’t be fully mended.
Animated documentary director Samantha Moore (An Eyeful of Sound, Bloomers) was awarded a commission from the BFI Short Form Animation Fund to make Visible Mending, a film about emotional repair through wool, produced by Tilley Bancroft through MediaActive Projects.
Visible Mending explores the effect that knitting has on the human brain to help people to reconnect with, and repair, themselves. Case studies include: a software engineer who re-learned knitting to recover fine motor skills after a stroke, an artist who uses her knitting as a medium to connect communities, a mother who knitted to process anxiety about her injured son, and a person with cancer who knits to shape and celebrate her days. These are framed for us by an occupational therapist specialising in pain management, who explains how knitting can help the brain as a therapeutic tool in ways we may not have considered.
The interviewees are all represented by a knitted or crocheted object of their choice, and their collaboration in representation is a vital part of the film. The film was made using stop motion animation at Second Home Studios in Birmingham. The tactility of handmade puppets generates a haptic empathy which conveys the cross generational benefits of textile crafts in mental health.
Animated documentary director Samantha Moore (An Eyeful of Sound, Bloomers) was awarded a commission from the BFI Short Form Animation Fund to make Visible Mending, a film about emotional repair through wool, produced by Tilley Bancroft through MediaActive Projects.
Visible Mending explores the effect that knitting has on the human brain to help people to reconnect with, and repair, themselves. Case studies include: a software engineer who re-learned knitting to recover fine motor skills after a stroke, an artist who uses her knitting as a medium to connect communities, a mother who knitted to process anxiety about her injured son, and a person with cancer who knits to shape and celebrate her days. These are framed for us by an occupational therapist specialising in pain management, who explains how knitting can help the brain as a therapeutic tool in ways we may not have considered.
The interviewees are all represented by a knitted or crocheted object of their choice, and their collaboration in representation is a vital part of the film. The film was made using stop motion animation at Second Home Studios in Birmingham. The tactility of handmade puppets generates a haptic empathy which conveys the cross generational benefits of textile crafts in mental health.
watch the 'Making of Visible Mending' here
Interviews on BBC Radio Shropshire.
A radio feature by Jim Hawkins for, and broadcast by, BBC Radio Shropshire. Jim visited Church Stretton's Mayfair Community Centre for a special screening of the film for the Shropshire based knitters and crafters ('Merrymakers’ group) who collaborated with Samantha on the project.
Jim did three interviews - one with Samantha Moore, one with members of the ‘Merrymakers’, and a final one with Peter Johnson, who recorded the original interviews with the group, and narrated the audio description version of Visible Mending. You can listen to each of these interviews below.
Jim did three interviews - one with Samantha Moore, one with members of the ‘Merrymakers’, and a final one with Peter Johnson, who recorded the original interviews with the group, and narrated the audio description version of Visible Mending. You can listen to each of these interviews below.
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Samantha Moore
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Samantha Moore is a UK based, international award-winning animation director. She loves the joyfulness and eclectic nature of animation. No one ever finds animation intimidating, and yet it can convey complex ideas to a wide audience in an engaging way. Samantha has made work on diverse subjects, from competitive sweet-pea growing (Success with Sweet Peas 2003), to archaeology (Treasure, 2021), audio visual synaesthesia (An Eyeful of Sound, 2010) and cutting edge microbiology (Loop, 2016, A Language of Shapes 2022). Visible Mending is her first film directing stop motion animation, made possible by the BFI Short Form Funding which supports established animation directors to develop their practice. The film began as a collaborative arts project working with older people in Shropshire. Commissioned by MediaActive Projects and Arts Alive through their Creative Conversations partnership programme and funded by Arts Council England's Celebrating Age Fund. |
Find out more about MediaActive Projects here
