Review Reports - The “Invisible” Heritage of Women in NeSpoon’s Lace Murals: A Symbolic and Educational Three-Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I enjoyed reading this piece and recommend it for publication after some minor revisions. Overall, it is well written, well referenced and makes some very good points. However, there are three main areas where the authors need to tighten up the argument/address the link between methds and argument to really showcase the strength of their research. The most important of these (in my opinion) is employing a much more nuanced understanding of craft and the complex relationship of craft to wage/unwaged labour, the domestic sphere, and industrial production. I tackle this last in my comments, but it is the area where I think the most nuance needs to be introduced. Overall, I think these comments can be addressed with more detail being paid to the particularities of each case, both in terms of the visual aspect and comunity engagement.

My first comment relates to the method and the use of focus groups of students in Poland. I found this an interesting exercise and the reactions of the students interesting. But I wondered what exactly the authors learned from this exercise that they could translate into their conceptual understanding the site-specific nature of the artwork (and its pedagogy). Given the students were neither from the location, nor in the location, what did the authors hope to gain conceptually from the exercise? I am not saying it was not a valid exercise; just that I would have liked a bit more information on what aspect of the overall argument this method contributed.
My second comment is about the pedagogical nature of the murals. The authors argue that the murals can deliver place based education, and that the murals have affective force. While I am sure this is true - particularly in communities which have an actual lace heritage (see below) - there isn't much actual eveidence of this happening in the three cases. How exactly do the murals promote heritage literacy and act as 'an embodied, place-based educational practice'? Adding some concrete examples of how people have engaged with the murals, when and how they have been drawn into concrete pedagogical and/or heritage focused activities will helo flesh out this argument. Currently it feels more like an extrapolation, than a fully fleshed argument.
My final and most important comment relates to craft, and specifically craft and lace. The authors quite rightly point out that lace making and other female crafts have been marginalised aesthtically, in art history and art practice, and thet NeSpoons art overturns heirarchies and throws light on women's handicrafts and domestic labour. The problem is, however, that the authors themselves do not seem to investigate or problematize what 'domestic work' and lace as 'handicrafts' actually means in the three contexts. They appear to understand lace (of any kind, in any place) as a product of women's handicrafts (as in something made at home, for family/the house, in a vernacular/amateur way), and domestic work as 'taking care of the house/family - including doing sewing/handicrafts'. They do not investigate what kind of lace Nespoon has chosen to depict in each case (handmade? machine made? what technique - this is important as some technique are very general (crochet) and others very site-specific and complex, e.g. needle lace), the source of it (who/where?), and most crucially whether the location has a history of women making lace for sale - which is the case in many communities across Europe. I don't know if one or all these communities were places where women made lace for sale; but in such communities 'domestic work', 'handicrafts' and 'making lace' had quite a different meanings for local women. Nespoon has worked both in communities with strong lancemaking histories (for example Koniakow in Poland or Malmo in Sweden or Alencon in France), and other places which do not. The fuzziness around the actual lace used and its source (and the heritage implications) sometimes leads to odd coupling in the text: for example, in the first exmaple on Lodz, the authors note that the mural evokes the city's history as a textile manufacturing centre and that there was a jaquard lace factory there and stated Nespoon used a piece of lace found in a second-hand shop and that this - Nespoons mural restores to memory the delicate, often overlooked sphere of women's handwork lace associated with domestic labour...'. Whats not clear from the text is whether the peice Nespoon used was actually hand made or a product of the Geyer factory - and how a hadnmade peice (if it was so) would recall industrial textile production? I think the general point about the connection with the city's heritage stands, but the connection is not really clear and I think could be more interestingly and dynamically argued if the authors reflected more on the nature of the relationship between handmade and industrial here. While diving into more detail about the individual peices and local traditions of textile work might seem like nit-picking, the piece would be considerably streghtened if the authors took a more nuanced approch to this and really questioned what handicrafts/domestic work etc mean in each case - otherwise they might end up inadvertantly strenghtening the idea that it has always 'merely' been something small and private and unimportant done by housewives at home (which is exactly what I understand they see Nespoon and their own owrk arguing against!).

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comment 1:

My first comment relates to the method and the use of focus groups of students in Poland. I found this an interesting exercise and the reactions of the students interesting. But I wondered what exactly the authors learned from this exercise that they could translate into their conceptual understanding the site-specific nature of the artwork (and its pedagogy). Given the students were neither from the location, nor in the location, what did the authors hope to gain conceptually from the exercise? I am not saying it was not a valid exercise; just that I would have liked a bit more information on what aspect of the overall argument this method contributed.

Response:

We appreciate this point. The focus-group component was designed as a conceptual-validation proxy for haptic/affective reading of lace patterns under controlled conditions and as a complement to our multisite digital inquiry. We now make this function explicit in Materials and Methods and clarify that claims about site-specificity rest on triangulation: 1) visual analysis, 2) contextual sources, 3) whereas the focus groups validate the transferability of perceptual and pedagogical categories - new paragraph added in Materials and Methods.

Comment 2:

My second comment is about the pedagogical nature of the murals. The authors argue that the murals can deliver place based education, and that the murals have affective force. While I am sure this is true - particularly in communities which have an actual lace heritage (see below) - there isn't much actual eveidence of this happening in the three cases. How exactly do the murals promote heritage literacy and act as 'an embodied, place-based educational practice'? Adding some concrete examples of how people have engaged with the murals, when and how they have been drawn into concrete pedagogical and/or heritage focused activities will helo flesh out this argument. Currently it feels more like an extrapolation, than a fully fleshed argument.

Response:

We have adjusted the wording: from universal claims to affordance-based formulation.

We added concise, place-tied pedagogical scenarios for each site: Łódź, Belorado, Fundão, that derive from the spatial grammars identified in our analysis and from participants’ proposals: workshops, mapping, media translation.

We also add a paragraph in the Conclusions recommending 360° VR repositories to approximate embodiment when working trans-locally - new paragraphs in 6.4 and Conclusions.

Comment 3:

My final and most important comment relates to craft, and specifically craft and lace. The authors quite rightly point out that lace making and other female crafts have been marginalised aesthtically, in art history and art practice, and thet NeSpoons art overturns heirarchies and throws light on women's handicrafts and domestic labour. The problem is, however, that the authors themselves do not seem to investigate or problematize what 'domestic work' and lace as 'handicrafts' actually means in the three contexts. They appear to understand lace (of any kind, in any place) as a product of women's handicrafts (as in something made at home, for family/the house, in a vernacular/amateur way), and domestic work as 'taking care of the house/family - including doing sewing/handicrafts'. They do not investigate what kind of lace Nespoon has chosen to depict in each case (handmade? machine made? what technique - this is important as some technique are very general (crochet) and others very site-specific and complex, e.g. needle lace), the source of it (who/where?), and most crucially whether the location has a history of women making lace for sale - which is the case in many communities across Europe. I don't know if one or all these communities were places where women made lace for sale; but in such communities 'domestic work', 'handicrafts' and 'making lace' had quite a different meanings for local women. Nespoon has worked both in communities with strong lancemaking histories (for example Koniakow in Poland or Malmo in Sweden or Alencon in France), and other places which do not. The fuzziness around the actual lace used and its source (and the heritage implications) sometimes leads to odd coupling in the text: for example, in the first exmaple on Lodz, the authors note that the mural evokes the city's history as a textile manufacturing centre and that there was a jaquard lace factory there and stated Nespoon used a piece of lace found in a second-hand shop and that this - Nespoons mural restores to memory the delicate, often overlooked sphere of women's handwork lace associated with domestic labour...'. Whats not clear from the text is whether the peice Nespoon used was actually hand made or a product of the Geyer factory - and how a hadnmade peice (if it was so) would recall industrial textile production? I think the general point about the connection with the city's heritage stands, but the connection is not really clear and I think could be more interestingly and dynamically argued if the authors reflected more on the nature of the relationship between handmade and industrial here. While diving into more detail about the individual peices and local traditions of textile work might seem like nit-picking, the piece would be considerably streghtened if the authors took a more nuanced approch to this and really questioned what handicrafts/domestic work etc mean in each case - otherwise they might end up inadvertantly strenghtening the idea that it has always 'merely' been something small and private and unimportant done by housewives at home (which is exactly what I understand they see Nespoon and their own owrk arguing against!

Response:

We agree and have introduced a new analytical subsection that differentiates technique, production regimes: wageunwaged; home, industrial and heritage circuits.

We then thread these distinctions through each case: Łódź - handmade vs jacquard scenarios and their distinct symbolic loads, Belorado - neighbourhood scale and communalisation of the motif), Fundão - intermaterial dialogue with azulejos and shifting regimes of visibility.

This expanded analysis clarifies the relationship between handcraft, mechanisation, and women’s labour, while avoiding an undifferentiated notion of “lace.” The revisions reinforce our argument about the monumentalisation of intimacy and the revaluation of craft within public art - new analytical subsection added after Section 3; short inserts in Sections 5.2–5.4; clarifying note in Sections 6.1–6.2.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is among the strongest articles I have had the pleasure of peer-reviewing. It is beautifully written, carefully situated in its interdisciplinary terrain, and compellingly argued throughout. I particularly appreciate the thorough attention given to method, which is evident in both its formal articulation and its operationalization across the analysis and discussion of the three case studies.

I confidently recommend the article for publication with minor revisions, offering the following suggestions, listed in order of relative significance:

Articulating Punctum

Barthes’ Studium and Punctum serves as a generative interpretive lens throughout, but I would suggest some small modifications with regard to the articulation of the latter. As the authors point out, the Punctum speaks to the affective potential of an image to “prick” its viewer, a deeply subjective process of that resists universalization—in distinction to the Studium, which can be captured systematically with reference to particular codes and aesthetic/compositional properties. As such, I find the certainty of phrasings like “Barthes Punctum manifests doubly” (7) or “Punctum appears first” (10) too prescriptive and would suggest softening the language to more subjunctive phrasings, i.e. Punctum is invited, or potentially manifests. This preserves the interpretive frame and significance of affective analysis—which is given specificity through the focus group statements—without enforcing a unified reading.

Additionally, I would suggest inverting the order of Stadium and Punctum—beginning with Studium, followed by Punctum—in the section on the Łódź mural for better flow and alignment with the other sections.

Writing and Clarity

While the writing is excellent throughout, I list below a few instances that could benefit from review and revision for clarity and flow.

P. 5: “The project’s scope three locations” – Unclear phrasing, please review.

P. 6: “I visited the Central Museum…” – In the previous pages the authors use the first person plural “we.” It is unclear to me whether the use of the singular here is a slippage (in which case it should simply be adjusted) or an unmarked quote from the artist, please review.

P. 10: “Respondents spoke of a ‘soft intervention in a hard fabric’: ‘women’s work attains a scale that cannot be ignored’” – Overall, interview quotes are interwoven seamlessly, but in this instance the two subsequent quotes should be integrated into a more fluent syntactic structure.

P. 11: “This Punctum a sudden flash of sense” – Unclear phrasing, please review.

P. 15: “Lace a fragile soft material…” – This sentence needs punctuation to separate the subordinate clause.

P. 16: “after the attacks in Norway” – Add a bit more specificity, even if just the year.

P. 18: “an ‘atlas-like’ comparative montage – Unclear, explain/contextualize.

References

Overall, the article is well situated within the relevant literature of its fields, but I offer two suggestions that I believe would benefit its framework:

On page 9, the authors invoke the notion of “wallpaper” to denote the merely decorative function of murals. The term has been used in this way by RJ Rushmore in a 2016 conference paper and blog post (see https://blog.vandalog.com/2016/08/16/beyond-wallpaper-street-art-works/) and should be referenced accordingly.

The authors make a compelling case for NeSpoon’s artworks as a form of heritage, with references to relevant literature. That said, I think the framework could be strengthened by weaving in the excellent work of Laila Nomeikaite on street art and/as heritage, which draws heavily on notions of affect and strikes me as highly relevant for this project. See especially “Street Art, Heritage, and Affective Atmospheres” (2023).

On Pedagogical Activation

Section 6.4 on pedagogical potentials is compellingly articulated but left me wondering whether these potentials are merely hypothetical or whether NeSpoon’s works have been activated in the ways described in the final paragraph (“In practice…”). Some clarification on this matter would be beneficial.

Author Response

I confidently recommend the article for publication with minor revisions, offering the following suggestions, listed in order of relative significance:

Comment 1:

Articulating Punctum

Response:

We appreciate this valuable observation. We have carefully revised all relevant passages to soften the modality of phrasing, changing definitive formulations into more subjunctive expressions e.g., “Punctum may manifest”, “Punctum is invited”, “Punctum potentially emerges”. This adjustment preserves the openness and subjectivity consistent with Barthes’ conception of affect. Additionally, in the Łódź section we have reversed the analytical order, now beginning with Studium and followed by Punctum, ensuring structural consistency with the other case analyses and improving narrative flow.

Comment 2:

Writing and Clarity

While the writing is excellent throughout, I list below a few instances that could benefit from review and revision for clarity and flow.

5: “The project’s scope three locations” – Unclear phrasing, please review.
6: “I visited the Central Museum…” – In the previous pages the authors use the first person plural “we.” It is unclear to me whether the use of the singular here is a slippage (in which case it should simply be adjusted) or an unmarked quote from the artist, please review.
10: “Respondents spoke of a ‘soft intervention in a hard fabric’: ‘women’s work attains a scale that cannot be ignored’” – Overall, interview quotes are interwoven seamlessly, but in this instance the two subsequent quotes should be integrated into a more fluent syntactic structure.
11: “This Punctum a sudden flash of sense” – Unclear phrasing, please review.
15: “Lace a fragile soft material…” – This sentence needs punctuation to separate the subordinate clause.
16: “after the attacks in Norway” – Add a bit more specificity, even if just the year.
18: “an ‘atlas-like’ comparative montage – Unclear, explain/contextualize.

Response:

We thank the reviewer for these precise editorial suggestions. All the indicated passages have been revised for clarity, syntax, and stylistic consistency.

On page 5, “The project’s scope three locations” now reads “The project encompassed three locations…”.

On page 6, the sentence “I visited the Central Museum…” has been clarified as a direct quote from the artist, enclosed in quotation marks to maintain accuracy.

The focus-group quotation on page 10 has been syntactically integrated for smoother flow.

“This Punctum a sudden flash of sense” has been rephrased to “This moment of Punctum, a sudden flash of meaning…”.

Punctuation has been added to “Lace, a fragile, soft material…”.

The reference to “the attacks in Norway” now specifies the year “(after the 2011 attacks in Norway)”.

The metaphor “atlas-like comparative montage” has been contextualised in the concluding methodological section as referring to a comparative visual mapping that links the three cases through spatial and cultural montage.

Comment 3:

References

Overall, the article is well situated within the relevant literature of its fields, but I offer two suggestions that I believe would benefit its framework:

Response:

We fully agree and have implemented both suggestions. We have now added a citation to RJ Rushmore (2016) when discussing the metaphor of “wallpaper” to acknowledge its established critical use in street art discourse.

We have also integrated the work of Laila Nomeikaite (2023) into the discussion of affect, heritage, and atmosphere. This reference appears in Sections 6.3. and 6.4, where we now situate NeSpoon’s murals within current debates on affective atmospheres and heritage-as-practice, further strengthening the theoretical framework.

Comment 4:

On Pedagogical Activation

Response:

We appreciate this question. In the revised version, we clarify that the pedagogical potentials described in Section 6.4 are grounded in observed and documented forms of activation, though not formalised as institutional programmes.

In particular, we refer to local participatory initiatives and focus-group proposals that illustrate the actual and potential activation of NeSpoon’s murals as educational and heritage-learning spaces. The section now explicitly states that these examples function as “emergent and replicable models of public pedagogy, observed or envisioned in community contexts.”

This clarification more clearly connects empirical observation with pedagogical interpretation, as suggested.

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The manuscript is generally clear and relevant to the field. The project is evocative and quite original insofar as it employs a qualitative visual research design that utilises a three-case study approach based on the artistic practice of the artist NeSpoon (Elżbieta Dymna). NeSpoon’s street art is presented as an example of a critical urban pedagogy that renders “frames heritage literacy as an embodied, place-based educational practice”. The author delves into the analysis of a combination of methods and theories that highlight the educational and transformative potential of NeSpoon’s street art - murals inspired by the art of lace-making –. This draws upon the connections between textile politics and the capacity of street art to challenge aesthetic hierarchies. Overall, I feel that there are some organisational changes that need to be made, as well as other considerations, which I detail below:

The author presents a thorough description and analysis of the methodology and methods. Yet, the Discussion and the Interpretation and Findings sections would be strengthened by giving the main focus around heritage literacy and place-based pedagogical practice more space to develop rather than attempting to address a wide range of (concepts, practices and theories) ultimately tangential areas to the central argument (i.e. The Performativity of Space and Memory: Punctum and the Affective Force of Murals). It would be beneficial for the author to prioritise the research focus and delve deeper into the aim of the study and its aims “to explain how NeSpoon’s practice transforms women’s craft into a medium of visible heritage and operates as a public pedagogy in specific urban configurations”.

I wonder how NeSpoon’s artistic background and methods -critical to the main topic of the study - analysis and interpretation of findings - might have been foregrounded more significantly upfront –. The abstract would benefit from revision to more clearly and concisely reflect the study. It feels that at present it is failing to capture its focus and contribution which limits its potential in engaging the reader.

If there was room for more analysis, the implications of expanding the field of application of Barthes’s concept of the punctum from the semiotic analysis of the photographic image to the qualitative visual analysis of street art murals and installations would strengthen the overall narrative and methodology.

An important point for the author to consider is that there is very little unpacking of the ethical considerations of this study beyond the short mention in the text, that is merely in relation to the ethics of academic citation and the focus group interview component.

Below are some smaller comments that should be fixed before publication:

The submission would strengthen by the inclusion of more and clearer images throughout the paper. The author might consider including the author’s details as appropriate within the image captions, as well as figure numbers within the body of the text when referring to the images (for example.

It would strengthen the referencing to add the page numbers to the in-text citations, especially in direct quotes, paraphrasing specific ideas or explaining sections taken from other sources.

In addition, the in-text citations should not be repeated within each entry in the reference list .

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The overall language is clear. However, some terms may be difficult for readers unfamiliar with the topic or area. I would suggest providing definitions and reviewing punctuation as this will greatly improve readability.

Author Response

Comment 1:

Response:

We thank the reviewer for this thoughtful observation. We have revisited the Discussion and Interpretation of Findings sections to strengthen the central thread of the argument. In the revised manuscript, these themes are now foregrounded and explicitly articulated as the key interpretive axis linking all three case studies. Peripheral theoretical references have been streamlined to enhance focus and coherence. This restructuring clarifies how NeSpoon’s practice transforms women’s craft into a visible and participatory form of heritage while functioning as an example of public pedagogy embedded in urban contexts.

Comment 2:

Response:

We appreciate this constructive suggestion. The Introduction now includes a brief but more substantial overview of NeSpoon’s artistic background, creative methods, and evolution within the field of street art and feminist visual activism, providing clearer context for the analysis that follows.

The Abstract has also been revised to offer a more concise and focused summary of the research scope.

Comment 3:

Response:

We are grateful for this insightful remark. The revised text elaborates on the methodological implications of extending Barthes’s concept of punctum beyond photography to large-scale mural and installation art. We now clarify how punctum functions as an interpretive category for capturing the affective and haptic responses elicited by street art bridging visual semiotics with embodied urban pedagogy. This addition, integrated into Sections 5.2 and 7.5.

Comment 4:

Below are some smaller comments that should be fixed before publication:

Response:

We thank the reviewer for this practical suggestion. Figure numbers have been integrated within the body of the text to facilitate cross-reference, and captions now contain authorial and source details in accordance with Arts guidelines.

Comment 5:

It would strengthen the referencing to add the page numbers to the in-text citations, especially in direct quotes, paraphrasing specific ideas or explaining sections taken from other sources.

In addition, the in-text citations should not be repeated within each entry in the reference list .

Response:

We appreciate this helpful observation. In the revised version, page numbers have been added to all direct quotations and close paraphrases to ensure accurate attribution and scholarly precision. In cases where references concern broader conceptual frameworks, methodologies, or the general argument of a work rather than a specific passage, citations remain without page numbers, as is standard in the Arts and APA style. The reference list has also been harmonised with the journal’s guidelines, correcting journal citations and removing redundant in-text repetitions.