As we tumble down the rabbit hole of daily news, the combined phenomenon of doom-scrolling and media fatigue prevents us from extending our empathy and attention to every issue imaginable – especially when those issues become our realities rather than abstract sentences that we read carefully and set aside. Founded in 2012, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRP), a nonprofit whose mission is to “humanize inequality” through journalism, is tackling this issue even as affiliate writers tackle topics ranging from culture and work to housing and education to engage readers. to challenge the status quo.

So what can be done to alleviate media fatigue? What’s the most effective way to keep audiences engaged and activated instead of barely dealing with the news cycle? Model maker Diana Weymar, creator of the Small bites project (2018 – ongoing), recommends adopting more traditional ways of accessing media, including through embroidery.

Weymar collaborated with the EHRP on move the needle (2023-ongoing), a series of hand-embroidered quotations from articles, poems, and other writings by various EHRP contributors addressing economic and racial justice. It is through this craft that Weymar and the EHRP are able to combat the easy slide into digital escapism that accompanies the impermanence of receiving information through social media.

Weymar uses vintage handkerchiefs and other second-hand or donated fabrics as the surface, noting the irony of their soft floral designs in contrast to the punchy quotes that anchor the couture works.

“There’s also this empathy – this compassionate gesture of offering someone a handkerchief during a difficult time – that becomes really clear in this project,” the artist said. Hyperallergic. The delicate and painstaking manipulation of these quotes also makes it possible to stop people in their tracks, digitally or in person, for further investigation.

“It really gives people different ways to approach different topics through the material,” Weymar continued. As a mother of four, she also highlighted the portable nature of the medium which works to her advantage, but also made other connections to the focus on EHRP and working with what the we have on hand.

Alissa Quart, Executive Director of EHRP, also quoted in the move the needle project, was excited about the collaboration because it always encourages people in media “to do more imaginative things with non-fiction.”

“One of the things that strikes me when I go to museums and studios is how little of the work on display really addresses income inequality,” Quart explained. “I hope on top of that there will be another rare art project that deals with these topics because I love when artworks confront those who are often excluded from museum culture and art culture. . I think it’s really important that it’s not just journalism that does this. Really, it’s just fun to think more creatively about some of these issues.

Journalist and author Reniqua Allen-Lamphere, whose EHRP supported Squire piece is quoted in one of Weymar’s sewing works, forwarded to Hyperallergic that she thinks the project captures something different from what print media can encompass. Her story tackles photojournalist Gordon Parks’ wildly popular documentation of the segregation-era South and its impact on a black American family. The quote from the article that Weymar embroidered was “It has always been a radical act for a black woman in America to dare to dream,” a reference to Allie Lee Causey, an Alabama teacher who spoke out against school segregation in the 1950s.

“The work portrays black women in a medium that, in many ways, can be read as soft, delicate, and complex — things that are often not synonymous with the stereotypical black woman,” Allen-Lamphere clarified. “I love that the project pushes boundaries and perceptions and I think it honors the spirit of the main character of my Squire & EHRP part.

Jen Fitzgerald, another well-quoted EHRP writer and poet whose work delves into labor, solidarity, and personal experiences with pandemic-induced housing insecurity as a fifth-generation New Yorker, said that she could think of few things better than embroidery to immortalize a line from her poem “American Landscape: Inheritance,” published on literary center in 2020.

“The beauty and delicate nature of embroidery with the contemplative violence of the woman, alone in her space, stabbing the sharp needle through and through the fabric, dragging the thread and forming a small world out of her work “, illustrated Fitzgerald, is an honorable way to etch one’s personal experiences into tangible permanence.

“With this thread, I connect all these ideas and connect people to each other,” Weymar noted. “Paint mixes, but yarn is still yarn and textile is still textile – I think that translates well to the art of non-fiction writing.” move the needle is an ongoing collaboration with no scheduled end date.