After more than a year-long wait, the Quilt of Connection – Derby is now on display at The Museum of Making, and it feels like a truly special moment.
The project began with a simple but powerful question: What is your story, and how would you like it to be told? And, if you could be represented in your local museum, how would you choose to be celebrated? These questions invited people across Derby and Derbyshire to reflect on their lives, their journeys and their connections to this place. What followed was a series of gentle conversations, shared making and moments of connection that slowly grew into a large, collaborative artwork, one made not by a single artist, but by a whole community.
The Quilt of Connection is a slow-stitched textile collage created by the people of Derby and Derbyshire. Each stitched piece carries a personal story, of belonging, migration, memory, resilience, love and community. Together, these fragments form a shared portrait of a living, diverse city. The project was developed in response to History Makers: Unfolded by Derby Museums, which asked visitors to reflect on whose stories are told in museums and whose are still missing. This quilt is a collective response to that question, placing lived experience and community voices at the heart of the museum.
Cloth became a form of memory within the project. Participants repurposed cherished, unwanted, and discarded textiles, stitching their narratives into reclaimed fabrics associated with everyday life and human connection, bed sheets, tablecloths and cloth carrying the traces of use, care and shared history. These materials became vessels for storytelling. Piece by piece, layer by layer, the quilt grew into a tactile collage that holds stories of love, friendship, family, loss, loneliness, migration and belonging.
The process of making was not separate from the artwork; it was the artwork. In my practice, the space created through shared making is always as important as what is eventually produced. This is where the real magic happens: where conversations unfold, relationships form, communities connect and individuals begin to see themselves reflected as part of something bigger. The Quilt grew not only through fabric and thread, but through time spent together, listening, sharing and being present with one another.
Workshops took place across Derby and Derbyshire, including sessions with Maison Foo, Derby Multi-Faith Centre, Women’s Work Derbyshire, and Craft & Chat Ashbourne, alongside open drop-in workshops at Derby Museum & Art Gallery and the Museum of Making. These sessions were supported by the museums’ wonderful volunteers and welcomed people of all ages and abilities. Each person who took part brought something unique, a memory, a piece of cloth, a story, a feeling, and together those contributions now sit side by side, creating something bigger than any one of us.
Seeing the Quilt of Connection displayed at the Museum of Making is deeply moving. It represents a shift, placing community voices, lived experience, and personal histories at the centre of a cultural space. This quilt belongs to everyone who contributed to it, it is their story, now held in the museum. Alongside the quilt, a book of participants’ reflections will soon be displayed, sharing the words and reasons behind each stitched piece.
A heartfelt thank you to everyone who shared their stories, time and creativity. This work would not exist without you. And special thanks to Sally Hawley, Hope Slater, and Eilish Clohessy-Dennis for supporting this project and helping bring it into the museum.
If you were part of the project, I hope you’ll come and see your piece in person. And if you’re visiting Derby, I warmly invite you to experience the Quilt of Connection, a work made from real lives, real stories, and real connection.
Every Stitch A Story 