Facilitate a biweekly low-pressure hangout for people who need to make things with their hands and talk about the state of things.

Run a biweekly online hangout where people work on crafts or quiet creative projects while talking about whatever is on their minds. This is not a workshop. There is no curriculum. The facilitator's job is to show up, keep the space welcoming, and make sure no one feels pressured to talk, perform, or fix anything.

Participants can bring knitting, drawing, collage, embroidery, puzzles, model building, or anything else that keeps their hands busy. Conversation is optional. Dark humor is welcome. This is a space where it is okay to say how the current political situation is affecting you, and it is okay to just listen while other people say it. The only real rule is that the space stays low-pressure.

That said, there is a tradition of crafting as quiet activism, and this club is a natural home for it. The facilitator can occasionally introduce an optional craftivism prompt alongside the regular hangout: a small project with a message, a collaborative piece the group builds over several sessions, or a craft inspired by something the group has been talking about. These prompts should always be optional and never take over the session. The point is to offer a way to channel frustration into something tangible for people who want that, without changing the character of the space for people who just need to sit and make something.

Sessions happen every other week. On off-weeks, share a prompt, a photo of what you are working on, or just check in with the group in the club's Discord channel. Off-weeks are also for any light planning needed.

The group caps at 10 participants. If the group grows beyond what one person can handle, we will recruit a co-facilitator.

Essential skills:

• Comfort holding informal space without over-structuring it
• Ability to keep a group feeling welcoming without forcing participation
• Comfort with emotional conversations and the ability to keep the room supportive when people are venting
• Ability to gently redirect if a conversation becomes unproductive or starts to weigh the group down
• A craft or creative project of your own to work on during sessions

NOT required:

• Teaching or workshop facilitation experience
• Expertise in any particular craft

Operative must provide:

• An account with the digital platform that will host the club meetings
• Between-session engagement in the Discord channel on off-weeks
• Promotion and participant recruitment for the club

MFU will provide:

• An interest form on the MFU website to help identify the best times for the meetings
• A scheduling app on the MFU website that allows people to sign up for the club
• A channel on the MFU Discord server for meetings and between-session discussion
• Promotion and participant recruitment for the club

You are welcome to use these sources to help you get started:

• The Craftivist Collective is a social enterprise that uses crafting as a tool for gentle activism. Their free resources, including a manifesto and online course, offer frameworks for combining making with meaningful conversation without the pressure of traditional protest.
• The Commons Library's craftivism collection gathers toolkits and guides on using craft as a strategy for activism and community building, including approaches designed for people who are burned out on louder forms of engagement.

For general questions, you can message your handler through your dashboard, contact @Owlett on Discord, or email info@myflyinguniversity.org.

If you have an idea for a different approach to all or part of this mission, please feel free to reach out before you get started!