January is National Hobby Month. While the origins of this awareness month are unclear, the new year does provide a great opportunity for exploring new hobbies or returning to an old one. On the second floor of the Central Library, check out a curated display of books and movies to help you find your new favorite pastime.

UTA students, staff, and faculty also have access to the Hobbies & Crafts Source database. This resource provides easy access to thousands of popular magazine articles that cover topics such as cooking, crafting, outdoor recreation, collecting, and more. Be sure to visit the FabLab, Studios, and Basement during your time at UTA. Dedicated staff assist all levels of learners exercise their creative talents through sewing, wood working, 3D printing, audio and video production, tabletop gaming, and much more.

For those who would like a more academic look at the concept of leisure time and hobbies, the University of Texas at Arlington Libraries has a wealth of resources to support you. Just ask a librarian to help you find the right database for your research topic.

Old Fashioned Pastimes

What counts as leisure? Gardening, hunting, fishing, knitting, carpentry, and other activities were, and sometimes still are, necessary for survival. In the past, the difference between doing something because it helped you survive, and doing something because it was fun, was often related to wealth and status. 

In Eighteenth Century Collections Online you can get a sense of how upper class men viewed leisure time by reading The School of Recreation: or, a guide to the most ingenious exercises of hunting, riding, racing, fireworks, military discipline, the science of defence, hawking, bowling, ringing, singing, cock-fighting, fowling, angling. The excessively long title sums up specific activities covered in this work, and the author also provides helpful advice in the introduction. Hobbies “for though in themselves they are harmless, yet a continual or insatiate persecution of any thing, not only lessens the pleasure, but may render it hurtful, if not to yourself, yet in giving offence to others, who will be apt to reflect upon such as seem to doat upon them, and wholly neglect their other affairs.”

The line between hobby and obsession depends on perspective. In the database Asian Life in America an article from the Time-Picayune December 3, 1916 issue describes imported Filipino toys appearing in shops across the United States. Among these is the now familiar yo-yo, which at the time was so novel that it required a description. By the late 1920s, a Filipino immigrant named Pedro Flores had established a US-based business selling yo-yos by the thousands, and so the craze began. 

A 1929 Houston Post article prematurely declared the yo-yo fad over despite supporters touting health and social benefits. “A.H. Walden, proud father of a champion yo-yoer of [Atlanta], declares that no other sport has done more to develop wrist muscles since dueling became illegal. He declares it encourages ambidexterity among college students, who turn left-handed to leave their right hands free for the yo-yo.” The article also mentions mah jong, another enduring pastime popularized in the United States by immigrant communities.

Little did Americans know that yo-yoing would emerge as an all-consuming hobby on a regular basis prompting parents and teachers to conduct inspections to make sure children weren’t smuggling the toy to school as described in this Austin Statesman article from 1962. By the 1980s it appears that educators had relented and were incorporating the hobby into classroom science lessons. Discovery mission astronauts even took the yo-yo into space in 1985 where the lack of gravity took all the fun out of physics-based toys.

Lifelong Passions

Hobbies can grow into larger endeavors when combined. In the past, especially for women, hosting engaging social events was a hobby that encompassed many other leisure skills such as card playing, sewing, painting, dramatic performance, magic tricks, cooking, and more. Numerous guides were published to help those who were new to the hobby of entertaining, such as What Shall We Do Tonight? published in 1873 and available in the database Gender: Identity and Social Change. In this book the reader will find step-by-step instructions for 6 months of once-a-week social gatherings focused on “laying aside all stately dignity and unnecessary restrain, to devote the whole or part of an evening to social amusement, pure and simple.”

Communities all over the world recognize that hobbies can teach important social and physical skills, foster lifelong relationships, and provide a sense of purpose.  In Ethnographic Video Online there are many videos that explore how crafting helps to foster cultural identity. In episode three of the 2017 series Uakallanga from the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation, modern Inuit artists provide instructions in their indigenous languages for making jewelry that combines contemporary and traditional materials. In addition to creating beautiful items of personal or ceremonial value, this kind of crafting strengthens cultural identity and affiliation as these skills are taught and practiced. 

The documentary Games We Play, found in the same database, features footage from the early 1990s of children and adults in Barbados, Dominica, Trinidad, and Antigua playing social games and sports. Men are shown build lasting relationships through impromptu games of draughts (a chess-like game), mancala, or dominoes as well as various sports. These groups sometimes develop into formal clubs, and skillful execution of these hobbies becomes a source of pride and accomplishment.

The scholarly community has been at the forefront of documenting the effect that hobbies have on personal well-being, as in this 2016 authoethnography about model plane and train building written by Nick Pollard and Neil Carver and published in the Journal of Occupational Science. The two researchers each kept a diary for 6 months which they swapped for the analysis phase. In both cases, the researchers described a “life cycle” of their hobby, with each discovering model making during childhood, dropping it during young adulthood, and returning to it during middle age. Their diaries revealed how hobbies become more complicated as people age and must negotiate time and space with a partner and/or children.

One of the most interesting parts of Pollard and Carver’s study is how they felt after the research was completed. “Neither of us would have revealed our involvement in modelling to each other, but for a chance remark…our recollections showed that we both needed a personal justification to re-engage with this childhood occupation, which revealed our ambivalence about connotations of ‘not having grown up’ and anxiety about social disapproval…A by-product of this study has been that these private anxieties have resolved through our recognition of a shared occupational experience.”

Hobbies for Everyone

Many people spend time considering whether an activity that appeals to them will meet with social disapproval. Beyond the psychological implications of these feelings, there are economic reasons to explore the intersection of personal identity and hobbies. The database Market Research & American Business, 1935-1965 includes the results of market research conducted in 1956 for a fishing gear company. A Pilot Study on Women in Fishing concluded that “women see their reaction to the traditionally masculine sport of fishing not just in terms of the sport itself, but as an expression and reflection of their patterns of relationship with men.” In other words, some women were interested in fishing so they could spend time with their husbands, some felt themselves equal to men and fished for their own enjoyment, and a third group did not want to fish at all because they felt it was unfeminine. Whether or not these assessments were accurate, the researchers uncovered interesting points about what leisure offered to some women. Specifically, an opportunity to socialize with other adults, appreciate the beauty of nature, and gain temporary freedom from the isolation and repetition of childcare and housework. 

The relationship between hobbies and marketing is complex and may go beyond simply advertising products. The database WARC contains cases studies of thousands of marketing campaigns including details about the intended audience and effect. To engage with a Gen-Z audience, the personal care brand Dove leveraged that generation’s interest in games, tech, and coding to launch the award winning “Code My Crown” initiative. This project coincided with the CROWN Act, which prohibits discrimination based on traditionally Black hairstyles. Dove marketers recognized that despite the growing number of Black gamers, especially Black women and girls, most video games did not accurately represent Black hairstyles. They partnered with celebrity natural hair stylists, the Open Source Afro Hair Library, and a team of Black 3D artists, animators, programmers, and academics to develop 15 new hair sculpts that could be modified for hundreds of textured hairstyles in video games. The project culminated in a 200-page guide for programmers that was distributed to major companies such as Ubisoft, Undead Labs, and Activision. What hobby could you discover that might change the way you and others see the world?

Cover photo: In a photograph from the UTA Special Collections Star-Telegram Collection, Mildred Gale (left) and Sarah Blum, members of the Council of Jewish Women, are shown among donations of used books they are collecting to benefit the Tarrant County Youth Center. Photo taken October 21, 1958. Special collections identifier AR406-6-3881