What an exam could look like
Updated On: 28 June, 2024 05:01 AM IST | Mumbai | Rosalyn D`mello
The atmosphere was electric as students picked up crochet needles for the first time, joyously engaging with a form of art-making that has been historically marginalised in a stress-free setting
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Crochet allows you to easily return to a previous round without too much fuss, unlike, perhaps, embroidery
As I was conducting the exam marking the end of the seminar on Gender Equity and Equality in Working Life situations that I delivered at the Free University of Bozen yesterday, I found myself in a conundrum. The classroom we had been assigned was windowless. Well, it had windows, but when you opened them, you were either confronted with a concrete wall or a view of the corridor. In the last two years, the exams always took the form of outdoor picnics with a game. But the last two days it had been raining, not incessantly, but the ground was wet, so this wasn’t an option. I knew what we would be doing this year for the exam. I asked all the 23 students who would be present to bring along a crochet needle and a ball of yarn. They would each attempt to make a granny square. But I also wanted us to have music playing in the background. I wanted either the laptop or the phone to function like a jukebox. One of the students suggested we move to their ateliers on the second floor. It was a brilliant idea.
The students organised themselves onto chairs, but soon enough many of them switched to the floor. One of them connected the laptop to the speaker. The functional windows allowed for generous sunlight, which added an element of sparkle to our morning. Only three of the students in the group knew how to crochet. So, it was really a question of beginning from the basics. I told them there was no real goal; they didn’t HAVE to make a granny square. They had already ‘passed’ the exam. But I wanted them, most of all, to engage with a form of ‘craft’/art-making that had been historically marginalised. All of them were either design or art students. I told them it was shocking that crochet is simply not taught at their university. They had access to a module on 3-D design printing, but a crochet needle was not on the curriculum. I wanted them to think about this omission, and how forms of art-making that have been historically considered part of a female domain, practised by grandmothers, are seen as not valuable enough to be taught or to be considered art.
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