Responses in stitch

Participants in the Bradford Covid-19 Stitch Journal have responded to their experience of lockdown using one stitched word, a few of which are shown in this post. As the project has progressed some strong themes have emerged through our online meetings and in written responses from the group. The group is made up of 27 women and we all live in the same geographical area but the clearest thing for me is that everyone is having a very different experience of this crisis. Another recurring theme is around the tactility of textile and the feeling that something is missing when we are unable to handle, look closely at and share our work around a table. A participant commented, ‘I miss the handle of fabric - of other people's work. That just doesn't come across in visual-only media.’

I asked the group to describe how they felt when stitching their chosen word and share some of the responses here:

‘Engaged in a thought and creative process. I have felt a range of emotions both positive and negative and the process helped me to realise and think about what I felt was important.’

‘I thought long about my choice of word. There are probably far more negative words to choose from but when I decided on Grateful I realised that it gave me a very strong good feeling and brought me out of any negative feeling that I might be experiencing.’

‘I felt pleased to be asked this question. It was easy to choose the word, & it came to me straight away, although I acknowledge that I actually no longer feel that way. Stitching the word was quite cathartic & I was happy to share my feelings.’

‘Thinking of the word made me really focus in on how I was feeling during lockdown. I came up with far more words than I had expected. I was obviously responding to the crisis more emotionally than I had previously thought. So during this process I felt a very tearful and exhausted. However once I'd settled on a word I felt that it gave me some focus so felt more grounded by the end of that activity.’

‘I felt the emotions connected to my word, 'overwhelmed' but it did lift me - somehow I was able to get some perspective and feel as though I was processing my experience and dealing with it in some way by engaging with it and explaining it to others.’

The next stage of the project is underway with participants working on a final larger linen square, a fairly open brief that speaks of their lockdown experience. As a group we are also thinking about how our squares might come together, temporarily or permanently.

Bradford Covid-19 Stitch Journal Project

Most of my projects are with people and communities: how does this work in a time of lockdown and social distancing? In the last few weeks I have been looking at my current projects and considering how creative engagement work can be done ‘together apart’. I’ve written a little about this as part of my long-term artist residency for Super Slow Way. I’ve also been pleased to have been offered a Response grant from Bradford Metropolitan District Council for a short textile project working with adults who live in the district. The Covid-19 Stitch Journal is a textile project for adults who would like to contribute to a quilt that explores their lived experience of the current crisis. The project will include a number of online workshops via Zoom to discuss our experiences of this and the wellbeing benefits that a collective textile project may offer in times of difficulty. These sessions will offer practical textile ideas as well as an opportunity to have conversations with others about personal experiences and strategies during this period of social distancing. I hope that those involved will be able to meet to stitch together later in the year. The textiles made during the project will be exhibited locally (venue tbc)and as part of an international conference, Cultural Heritage for Mental Health Recovery 2, in Belgium this December. The project will also be part of my ongoing research with The Open University.

UPDATE: This project is now part of a network of organisations, artists, and projects - The Quarantine Quilt Project - across the UK that are producing quilts and textile projects in response to Covid-19 and the changes it has brought to people’s lives. So far, participating projects include ours and projects in Devon, Oxford, Cambridge, London, Essex, West Yorkshire, and Derbyshire. Some are inviting participation from anywhere.  The network development is being led by Significant Seams CIC with funding from Arts Council England.

Lasting Impressions publication

In 2016 and 2017 I was involved in a collaborative project with my friend and fellow artist Hannah Lamb called Lasting Impressions. The project was commissioned by Saltaire Inspired for Saltaire Arts Trail. Working in the former spinning room at Salts Mill we created a performative and participatory work which aimed to create a record of the clothes worn by arts trail visitors. Working with materials including porcelain and fibre the project began many conversations-through-making with those who participated in the work. 

This year we have collated our responses to and images of the work in a publication. Lasting Impressions will be launched at this years' Saltaire Arts Trail, 5th - 7th May at Hannah's studio. We will be based at the Butterfly Rooms, Gordon Terrace and will be exhibiting some of the work made during the project.

Copies of the book are available here.

lasting impressions: cloth taxonomies

In 2016 Hannah Lamb and myself presented a commissioned work for Saltaire Arts Trail based in the Spinning Room in Salts Mill, once the largest industrial space in the world.  Lasting Impressions was a performative and participatory artwork that aimed to create an archive of the cloth we carry with us all the time; the clothing we wear day-to-day. Over three days we collected impressions of over 300 participants' clothing on porcelain tiles and their responses to the item in writing. During Saltaire Arts Trail this weekend will be archiving these responses and creating new work using fibre.

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The project will be asking participants to engage with fibre in familiar and unfamiliar ways; encourage people to discuss common material language and bring new audiences to engage with contemporary archival art practices.

We will be in the Spinning Room, Salts Mill on Saturday 27th, Sunday 28th and Monday 29th May. Performance times are 11-12pm , 1-2pm and 3-4pm each day. All are welcome.

worn stories: material and memory in bradford 1880-2015

I've recently started work on a new project for Hive, a community arts charity based here in Bradford.  “Worn Stories” is a two year project that will explore the heritage of textile reuse and second hand textiles in Bradford from 1880-2015. It is funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project will link past and present, identifying, interpreting and recording personal and community memories of arrival and belonging through stories of cloth. I'll be working with diverse groups from across the community who will develop research skills, learn about heritage through engagement in dedicated learning programmes within their own communities and share skills and experiences with others around the city. The project will reference the Bradford Heritage Recording Unit interviews of textile workers collected in the 1980s. I'm hoping that the project will offer an opportunity to have conversations about community ownership of textile recycling and reuse in the city and that this might have longer term impacts in reducing textile waste. We'll be encouraging interaction between communities and offering ongoing opportunities to relate the heritage of recycling to modern day practices. The community and volunteer led research from this project will result in the production of creative interpretive work for permanent display, digital online resources and a network of local textile recycling hubs for use in other communities and projects. Towards the end of the project we'll be having a conference that addresses some of the themes and will offer an opportunity for the communities involved to showcase some of their work. There is a project blog that will record the progress of the project as it develops if you are interested in finding out more.

[Images (clockwise from top left): baled textile waste to be made into Flock and wiper cloths, Randisi Textiles, Bradford; Rag waste in various forms from a Bradford paper mill, (image courtesy of Carolyn Mendelsohn); Unfinished patchwork with papers intact c.1880; my travelling scrap bag, used in many community projects over the years with fabric contributions from many participants and many projects.]

:: this project and my current residency are keeping me very busy. However, Hannah Lamb and I have been working towards the second stage of our Lasting Impressions project and this will be exhibited in the Spinning Room in Salts Mill as part of Saltaire Arts Trail this May. There will be another opportunity to see the work when it is exhibited in The Dye House Gallery, Bradford in July. I'll post more information about this soon.

madder root and gatty red

I am currently at the start of an eight month residency, ‘Local Colour’, based in Accrington, Lancashire, commissioned by Super Slow Way. This is a new commissioning body funded through Arts Council England as part of their Creative People and Places funding stream. It is hosted by the Canal and River Trust. A programme of work with local, national and international artists is being delivered in a series of commissioned and community-based residencies focussed on the bicentenary of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. ‘Local Colour’ is based at Elmfield Hall (c.1853) the former home of a textile industrialist, Albert Gatty, who specialised in Turkey Red print and dye techniques and who later became an innovator in the creation of a mineral khaki dye for use in army uniforms. The house is now the base of a social enterprise, Community Solutions North West, an organisation specialising in community engagement and support for vulnerable adults. 

Pictured (top left) is the interior of a small private dye house that Gatty had built next to his house where he could conduct his experiments. It has been virtually untouched since the late nineteenth century.  The project proposes to use a slow methodology to explore historical connections to the area around Elmfield Hall using ‘whole process’ working: seed-to-fabric projects where participants engage in activities that have a localised approach. The focus will partly be around the use of madder in Turkey Red printing. In the context of this durational project the creative processes of talking and making, or conversations through making, will be used to explore Elmfield Hall and its environs. In my proposal for the residency I quoted Lucy Lippard who describes ‘…a layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width as well as depth. It’s about connections, what surrounds it, what formed it, what happened there, what will happen there.’ (2007, p.7). I'll report back on our progress as the project develops.

:: My engagement with this blog has been sporadic to say the least in 2016. It's been a very busy year for me and has included some big changes and challenges. I'm planning to write another blog post soon with some information about a new long term project, my PhD research, an update about Lasting Impressions and workshop and exhibition news. Many thanks for continuing to support my work, for reading my book and for visiting my Instagram feed this year. It is very much appreciated.

Lasting Impressions

I'm delighted to be involved in this year's Saltaire Arts Trail, where I will be working with Hannah Lamb on a new performance work called Lasting Impressions.  Aiming to provoke conversations about the value of cloth and clothing, we will be collecting an archive of Arts Trail visitors' clothing as impressions in porcelain. Visitors will be invited to emboss porcelain tiles with textures from their clothing, an edge of a dress, the corner of a cuff, a coat zip... In exchange for leaving a mark from their clothing, each person will be offered the chance to have a gold or silver stitch added to their clothes.

Salts Mill is a former textile mill in Saltaire, just a few miles from the centre of Bradford, West Yorkshire. When it was built in 1853 it was the largest factory in the world. Lasting Impressions will take place in the Spinning Room in the roof space of the mill, a space not normally open to the public. The room is 168m long and once contained 16,380 cap spindles for spinning yarn. Whilst many visitors to Salts Mill will be well aware of the mill’s textile heritage, how many make the connection to the clothes they wear day-to-day? This project asks us to consider the cloth we carry with us all the time; Where does it come from? Where will it go? What impression will it leave on our own lives? What mark will it leave on the world?

Lasting Impressions takes place as part of Saltaire Arts Trail from 28th to 30th May 2016 and is supported by Arts Council England. Saltaire Arts Trail presents contemporary craft and visual arts in houses and historic venues around Saltaire village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. For further deals about the performances including times, and about other events during the Arts Trail please visit the website.