26 Feb Newcastle craftivists hijack valentines day including making their own envelopes (!)

Newcastle craftivist Hannah Rose reviews their valentines craftivism here: Newcastle heard rumour of a plan to hijack Valentines Day and had to be involved! Excited to carry on the Crafitivist collective's inspiring project we started screen printing paper, making posters and going out get more people involved. We organised a drop in session with The Star and Shadow's Canny little Library (http://cannylittlelibrary.wordpress.com/) in combination with their letter writing day.

20 Feb Leeds ActiveARTs members join us in hijacking valentines day

Leeds ActiveARTS is a new group founded by young artist and campaigner, Lana Johnson. We are proud to know that their first workshop they did was to deliver our Valentines project. They held their Alternative Valentine's Day workshop at REMADE in Leeds Hyde Park, at 6.00PM on MONDAY 31ST JANUARY. at dusk on Monday 14th February the delivered them across Leeds! The workshop was held at a cool little vintage shop in Hyde Park, Leeds called Remade. We are very pleased to report that it was a huge success! ActiveARTS group members and friends gathered around to chat, eat cookies and create shrink wrap key rings for our 'Alternative Valentine's Day' cards. Everybody created a love heart with a personalised message reminding you to spread the love. The love heart keyrings we made will be placed inside alternative Valentine's Day cards to be left out for the public, all over Leeds this Valentine's Day.  Instead of the usual stigma associated with Valentine's Day, we want to show and spread neighbourly and global love!

19 Feb Bunting to encourage discussion on gender inequality

By Craftivist Sarah Corbett Anyone who knows me knows that I would love this website to be like Miranda July's site Learning to Love you More. This amazing multi-talented artist, actress, film director and author creates assignments each month on this website to encourage people to show they care for each other and show the beautiful side of all life (one assignment says take a photograph of underneath your bed- the results of what people have sent in are lovely).

16 Feb Ubuntu Mini Protest Banner outside Wandsworth Prison

Craftivist Justine crafted this beautiful Mini Protest Banner and hung it outside Wandsworth Prison. Here she writes why she made her Mini Protest Banner and why she chose that specific location as the resting place for her creation: It is a protest about the injustice of poverty, and especially the massive and widening gap between the minority rich and the rest of us. It refers to the African concept of Ubuntu which we do not have a single word translation for in the English language (interestingly!) but which means something like 'we are human only together'.

13 Feb Manchester Oxfam Student Society join us in hijacking Valentines Day 2011

Blog by Jemma O'Brien of Manchester Oxfam Society The tables were set, scissors and glue lined up nicely, ribbon and fabric cut into even chunks, felt tips and coloured pencils at the ready, tissue paper, crepe paper, heart hole punch put in the middle (not as sinister as it sounds) big cards, small cards, envelopes, come to think of it, we’d completely wiped out the craft store. Now the people, were they going to come ‘get their craft on’ as one girl said? Yes! They came, hoorah! First through the door, three wonderful boys! At first slightly bewildered at the masses of crafty goods before them, they took their seats and went for it (not quite duck to water standard, one just stared at his card in confusion for a while) and by the time they had to leave to go ‘do science’ we had several beautiful cards made with their fair hands. But what are we doing here in this small top room of Manchester University?

23 Jan Manchester Craftivism in action: changing the world one stitch at a time

Around November 2010 a lovely guy called Duncan from Manchester who was a graphic design student contacted the Craftivist Collective and asked if he could set up a collective in Manchester. He was clear in saying that he had never cross-stitched before and didn't know much about climate change but he was passionate about setting up a craftivism session in Manchester and wanted to invite people to make our Mini Protest Banners on the theme of climate change. Sarah Corbett our Founder emailed Duncan lots of resources for the mini protest banner session on the environment and they had a good chat about how climate change was a human rights because it is the poorest people in the world with the least carbon emissions per head of the population being affected the most by the affects of climate change. They met in Liverpool for the first time on Wednesday 1st December at the Liverpool Bluecoat Bed-In project the Craftivist Collective where involved in and there, Duncan learnt how to make his first mini protest banner. Duncan, being the graphic designer he is made his own Mini Protest Banner kit envelopes and flyers but stuck to our manifesto and content of our kits. The first session went well and well enough that he set up a second session for his group Craftivism Manchester at Nexus Art cafe in the hip Northern Quarter of the city.

23 Jan LOVE FROM THE EARTH: Another valentines letter template option from Craftivist Jane Bartlett

At the London Craftivism evening in Tatty Devine's shop last Thursday (more info here) a lovely craftivist called Jane attended her first Craftivist Collective meeting. Jane emailed us to book a place and came along with so much energy, enthusiasm and positivity - she fitted in with the rest of the group perfectly.

After the meeting Jane emailed us another option for a valentines card. It was so beautiful we wanted to share it with you. If you want to use Jane's letter (below) instead of the template you can find here then please do. Alternatively you could write your own but please make sure it fits in with our manifesto and climate change.