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A first-stage accommodation is a transitional space in which residents wait for their next transfer. The present thesis deals with the experiences of children and adolescents in the transitional place, its psychosocial burdens and the cross-cultural expressive possibilities of weaving as part of a low-threshold, open art-therapeutic project in first-stage accommodations. The center of the project was the collective weaving of carpets and the connecting of the individual woven pieces into a “collective fabric” as a communal artwork. Weaving the carpets, as a cross-cultural craft, enabled an expression of the individual experience of the transitional place. At the same time, a moment of orientation within the transitional place itself emerged through participation in the collective weaving movement, which was documented and embodied through the communal artwork.

To address the question “What arises when we weave together?”, a research design was developed consisting of Participatory Action Research and artistic-research-based work, which was based on the guidelines for “Child friendly spaces.” This approach invited the children and adolescents to give form and to explore their own and shared experiences of and within the transitional place in an artistic and integrative way. “(...) to create a valuable new body of knowledge about childhood and children’s lived experiences.” (Kellett, 2010) became the aim of the research, as well as the promotion of the psychosocial well-being of the target group through participatory artistic work and research.