At first glance, belonging to a calligraphy guild or attending a quilting circle may seem like the very definition of apolitical activity. A handful of people gathering in a library conference room or church fellowship hall to have a potluck dinner and practice calligraphy flourishes or learn how to stitch seams in a hand-knitted sweater—what could be less consequential to the massive, convoluted problems of our world?
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And yet, as our democratic institutions are challenged, getting off social media and showing up in body, mind, and spirit at such gatherings may be among the most quietly radical practices we can engage in during this time. To gather with people offline and outside of our typical professional or family and friend groups around a shared hobby is to affirm that freedom is not only about rights and laws; freedom is about the ability to assemble, create, and find joy.
To take up a nib or a needle in public is to resist isolation, to insist on connection. It is to plant a flag of freedom in the soil of our everyday lives.
Identifying and pursuing our pleasures and hobbies help us remember that we are more than workers and consumers. When we step outside the privacy of our homes and meet others in such shared pursuits, we encounter people we might otherwise never cross paths with: an engineer alongside a poet, a blue-haired teenager alongside a purple-haired retiree, a fire chief alongside a wedding calligrapher.
In these spaces, we are in a dress rehearsal for democracy. We exchange tips; we share materials; we admire one another’s efforts; we try and fail; and we try and fail again. We build trust not through argumentation but through making.
Calligraphy, quilting, knitting, watercolor painting, pottery—these are not only hobbies but ways we are coming together to practice for a larger civic life. They remind us that our hands are capable of shaping, not just scrolling. They remind us that culture doesn’t only arrive prepackaged on screens but is made, here and now, within communities of care.
To take up a nib or a needle in public is to resist isolation, to insist on connection. It is to plant a flag of freedom in the soil of our everyday lives.
In an age when artificial intelligence can churn out paragraphs in seconds, the slow work of identifying hobbies we enjoy and showing up to do them with other people we may not know matters more than ever. Assembling in public spaces to learn our hobbies or form or join existing guilds teaches not only patience and attention but how to have relationships.
Freedom is the presence of choice, play, and our full-bodied imaginations. If we want future generations to inherit not just our technological innovations but also our shared humanity, we must keep gathering outside the privacy of our homes in these circles formed by shared love of ink, thread, paint, fabric, stencil, and clay.
To live in truth here, now, today is to resist the forces that would like nothing more than to isolate, numb, and commodify us.
In his timeless essay The Power of the Powerless, Václav Havel urged those living under totalitarian rule to “live in truth”—to conduct their lives as if the regime did not have the final say over who they were. In societies where the state controls schools, businesses, property, and speech, even small acts of refusal matter. By the late 1980s, this quiet resistance had spread across Central Europe. When the writer Anne Applebaum visited Poland in 1987, she recalls staying with friends who, by law, were required to report her presence to the police. “We don’t do that,” they said. “We don’t believe the police have the right to know who stays in our home.” Because thousands made the same choice, the rule eventually collapsed under the weight of noncompliance.
But Havel’s vision went beyond private acts of disobedience and noncompliance. Havel called for circles of people—musical groups, literary gatherings, sporting clubs, beer-making societies—to gather together outside of their homes so that they could nourish what he called the “independent life of society.” He believed we need spaces like these where we can breathe free. In many cases, such communities became schools for innovation and courage: clandestine printing presses, underground educational enterprises, and the free trade unions that birthed a whole movement for freedom.
What Havel called for then is also important for us now. To live in truth here, now, today is to resist the forces that would like nothing more than to isolate, numb, and commodify us. To live in truth is to refuse to be defined solely by what we consume, click, or produce for profit. And to live in truth is to make things together: to gather in circles of craft, gardening, storytelling, stitching, and painting; to come together around a shared love of cross-stitching or pottery or calligraphy and create communities where our imagination is not dictated by those in power but rather grows like seedlings out of the soil of our shared lives.
When we come together as makers, we begin to practice freedom. When we show up in spaces outsides our home where we can be creative and honest, what we build with our hands becomes a form of resistance against despair. Living in truth requires us to keep showing up in public for one another. To find or form a guild or creative circle:
– Check local libraries, community centers, or arts councils. These spaces often keep bulletin boards or lists of creative meetups.
– Visit art supply stores, independent bookstores, and co-ops. The staff will often know of existing groups.
– Search Meetup, Eventbrite, and Facebook groups for your region or town and relevant keywords like artist collective, guild, creative group, makerspace, open studio, etc.
– Attend gallery openings or local craft fairs and start conversations—often, creative networks are informal and word-of-mouth.
If you can’t quite find what you’re looking for, bring it to life yourself. Give your group a name and spread the word through social media posts and flyers at some of the aforementioned locations. Start small, and meet consistently, knowing that even three to five regular members can build something powerful over time.
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Excerpted from In Our Hands: A Maker’s Manifesto for Changing the World Through Creative Practices by Bonnie Smith Whitehouse. Copyright © 2026. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.