Craft & Art Journeys

A citywide exploration of craft, identity, and shared storytelling in Eindhoven. Through weaving, food inspired craft, and embroidery on archival photographs, participants create artworks that reflect the city through many perspectives.

This project is part of the European Artistic Crafts Days, a Europe wide celebration of craftsmanship and creative practice.

7–12 April 2026
Eindhoven, The Netherlands

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Patterns of Togetherness

The Concept

Craft & Art Journeys: Patterns of Togetherness is a citywide participatory project developed for the European Artistic Crafts Days. The initiative explores how craft practices can become tools for reflection, identity, and shared cultural expression.

Across three locations in Eindhoven, participants are invited to engage in hands-on craft experiences guided by artists and makers. Through weaving, food-inspired craft, and embroidery on archival imagery, the project connects individual creativity with collective storytelling.

Each activity invites participants to work with their hands while reflecting on personal experiences of place, culture, and belonging. Although every participant produces an individual piece, these works exist within a shared creative environment, where the presence of others shapes the atmosphere, dialogue, and meaning of the process.

Craft & Art Journeys positions craftsmanship not only as a technical skill but as a contemporary cultural practice that connects people, materials, and stories.

The Framework

CONNECTION

In Strijp-S, weaving practices focus on interdependence through sustainable materials and hand techniques. Participants experience how individual threads form resilient structures when brought together.

Craft & Art Journeys unfolds as a three-part exploration of how craft practices connect people to each other, to their identities, and to the places they inhabit. Through hands-on activities guided by artists and makers, participants engage with materials, techniques, and stories that reveal how craftsmanship can act as a medium for reflection and dialogue.

Each location in Eindhoven focuses on a different dimension of this exploration. Participants create individual works while sharing the same creative environment, allowing personal expression to develop alongside collective presence.

Together, these three approaches form a broader reflection on how craft can illuminate relationships between people, culture, and urban life.

IDENTITY

In the city centre, food serves as a lens to explore belonging and cultural identity. Through drawing and craft-based processes, participants translate personal experiences of food and migration into visual form.

URBAN MEMORY

In Woensel, participants reinterpret archival photographs of Eindhoven through hand embroidery. By stitching onto historical images, they introduce new layers of color and meaning into the visual memory of the city.

JOIN THE CRAFT JOURNEY, IT'S FREE

Chapter 1. Weaving Connections

At Strijp-S, participants explore weaving as a language of connection. Using natural fibers and sustainable materials, small-group atelier sessions introduce the tactile logic of warp and weft, where individual threads gain strength through interdependence.

Participants experiment with textures, tension, and the qualities of different fibers while creating a small woven piece of their own. The experience is designed as a moment of sharing, reflecting, and exploring together, while recognizing the time, patience, and care behind craftsmanship.

Each woven piece later becomes part of a collective textile installation composed of all contributions from the sessions. The final work reveals the fundamental principle of weaving itself: separate elements becoming stronger, more resilient, and more meaningful when interlaced.

Strijp - S. April 7, 8

Meet the Crafter - Romy Garfias

The weaving sessions at Strijp-S are guided by Romy Garfias, founder of KORU Handcrafted, a studio based in Eindhoven dedicated to working with wood and hand-woven natural fibers. Her practice is rooted in slow craft processes that value material knowledge, sustainability, and the quiet rhythm of making by hand.

Through her work and workshops, Romy explores the relationship between people and materials. Natural fibers, texture, and structure become tools to understand how individual elements interact, support one another, and form resilient compositions.

In this project, she introduces participants to the principles of weaving through a tactile and accessible approach. The sessions invite participants to slow down, engage with materials, and experience how craftsmanship can create moments of connection, reflection, and shared exploration.

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Chapter 2. Plates of Possibility: Food as Identity

City Center. April 9, 10

Meet the Artist - Payal Puthran

The sessions in the city centre are guided by Payal Puthran, a food illustrator whose practice explores the intersection of storytelling, culture, and craft. Through drawing and visual experimentation, she investigates how food carries memory, identity, and belonging across everyday experiences.

Her work focuses on familiar meals and comfort dishes, exploring how simple plates can hold migration stories, family traditions, and personal connections to place. Rather than focusing on culinary perfection, her approach highlights the emotional and cultural layers embedded in food.

Through drawing and making, participants explore how food becomes a shared language connecting people, cultures, and experiences.

In the city centre, food becomes a lens to explore identity, belonging, and cultural memory. Participants begin by contributing to a large map of Eindhoven, marking the first dish they ate when arriving in the city or the meal that made them feel at home. Gradually, the map becomes a visual archive of culinary experiences connected to the city.

Participants then create their own “dream plate” using a range of craft techniques such as wood burning, stenciling, and decoupage. Each crafted plate represents an imagined meal, a personal comfort dish, or a playful reinterpretation of food traditions.

Through craft and conversation, the sessions invite participants to reflect on how food shapes identity and how tastes, memories, and cultural influences evolve over time

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Chapter 3. Threads of Urban Memory

Woensel. April 11 & 12

Meet the Artists: Anna and Katrin

Anna and Katrin are two artists originally from Russia who work with different creative disciplines but share a common interest in craft, experimentation, and collaborative making. Together they founded ARTHOVEN, a creative studio in Eindhoven where art and craft bring people together.

Anna is a watercolor artist and teacher whose practice focuses on helping participants develop their own visual language through observation and experimentation. Her approach emphasizes process, patience, and the expressive possibilities of simple materials.

Katrin is a designer and collage artist who works across multiple craft techniques, combining paper, textiles, and found imagery. Her work explores how everyday materials can be transformed through layering, texture, and imagination.

In Woensel, participants explore the city through the lens of memory and place. The activity combines hand embroidery with black-and-white photographs of Eindhoven, transforming familiar urban scenes into tactile personal interpretations.

Participants work directly on printed city photographs using coloured threads and simple embroidery techniques. Stitch by stitch, new layers of meaning emerge as lines of thread interact with streets, buildings, and urban textures captured in the images. Participants will connect individual perspectives to a shared visual narrative of the city.

The process invites participants to slow down, observe the city differently, and reflect on how places become connected to personal experiences. Each embroidered photograph becomes a small visual statement about time, memory, and belonging.

RESERVE YOUR FREE SPOT

Join the Craft Journey

Curious about craft, stories, and creative exploration?

You are warmly invited to take part in Craft & Art Journeys: Patterns of Togetherness, a participatory project where making becomes a way to connect with others and with the city.

Across three creative sessions in Eindhoven, you will experiment with simple craft techniques, reflect on themes like identity and belonging, and create your own piece within a shared artistic environment.

No experience is needed.
All materials are provided.
Participation is free.

Places are limited, so make sure to reserve your spot.

JOIN THE CRAFT JOURNEY