Working collaboratively within community settings I focus on developing and facilitating creative textiles projects which empower individuals through creative practice, encouraging reflection, generating conversation and driving positive transformational change.
LIVE PROJECT: Stitching Ashbourne: A Celebration of Place, People & Stories
Stitching Ashbourne is a vibrant, community-led textile art project bringing the people of Ashbourne together to create a large-scale appliqué and embroidered artwork celebrating everything that makes our town special.
Developed in response to a challenging period for the town, the project offers a positive, creative way for people to reconnect with Ashbourne, with one another, and with the stories that shape this place.
The project has been made possible by funding from Ashbourne Methodist Church, St Oswalds Church, The Town Council, Ashbourne Arts and Ashbourne Rotary club alongside the support of a dedicated team of volunteers. The project invites people of all ages and abilities to stitch, share and celebrate the stories that make Ashbourne unique.
More information about the project here.
September 2024 – February 2025 Holocaust Memorial Day – 80 Candles Quilt
The 80 Candles Quilt is a collaboratively created memorial quilt, representing the stories of 80 individuals affected by the Nazi regime. The aim of the project has been to humanise the victims of mass genocide, encourage education through personal research, broaden understanding of the breadth of persecution and encourage active compassion which creates positive change.
Participants have researched and connected with real human stories of persecution, loss and survival which they have translated into beautiful slow stitched squares. The act of stitching both in solitary and in community workshops has provided space and opportunity for deep impactful connection and compelling visual story telling. Through workshops held across the region including at The National Holocaust Centre and Museum, The Multi Faith Centre, Ashbourne Cornerstone Café, Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School and Brailsford Methodist Church, the project has involved more than 60 individuals from across the UK with diverse faith and cultural backgrounds including The Derbyshire Jewish Community Group.
The quilt will be displayed in the at The Multi Faith Centre and Derby Cathedral as part of the National Holocaust Memorial Day commemorations on Monday 27th January, it will then travel around the region including being part of an exhibition at the National Holocaust Centre in Newark later in the year. More information can be found here.
This project has funded through a community Crowdfunding campaign. Further sponsors and supporters are sought to help further development of the project including printed ID cards to sit alongside the quilt when displayed, a book sharing the research carried out and ongoing exhibition costs such as transport and display.
May – June 2024 – Lantern Stories: Exploring 40 Years of Diwali Celebrations in Leicester
2024 marked 40 years of Diwali celebrations in Leicester. During this time celebrations have grown from small festivities in people’s homes to a large-scale festival that takes over the Belgrave Neighbourhood. This series of workshops for Inspirate Arts provided members of Leicester’s diaspora community, residing in assisted living, an opportunity to reminisce and share their personal experiences of Diwali, the celebrations in Leicester and how they have changed over the years. Participants were guided in the process of crafting their own slow stitched ‘Story Lantern’ in response to their experiences of celebrating Diwali.
November 2023 – May 2024 – Derby Museum’s Quilt of Connection
What is your story and how would you like it to be told? If you could be represented in your local museum, how would you choose to be celebrated? These are the questions we invited the people of Derby and Derbyshire to explore, documenting their responses in a giant slow stitched patchwork ‘Quilt of Connection’.
Quilts of Connection was a response to Derby Museum & Art Galleries’ exhibition History makers: Unfolded. The exhibition acted as a provocation for conversation, asking the people of Derby to reflect upon the stories already told within the museum space and importantly what stories are missing and should be told. Through a series of workshops, the people of Derby and Derbyshire collaborated to create a giant slow stitched patchwork. This work shares the personal stories of the people of Derby; their pride in the place they call home, their connections to pace, their journey here and their contribution to the vibrant place we call home.
Repurposing cherished or unwanted, leftover and discarded textiles participants incorporated the stories and memories held within cloth to document important personal narratives and express inner voice. The beautiful, tactile objects created then acted as tangible invitations for further conversation, discussion and remembrance.
The collage was worked onto reclaimed textiles associated with human connection including bed sheets and tablecloths, drawing on the intimacy of the objects, and the stories they contain of love, friendship, family, loss, loneliness, migration and community. Piece by piece the added fragments of fabric layered to create a collage style textile representing the participants as a community.
Workshops were held across Derby and Derbyshire and included specific groups to encourage the inclusion of voices often ignored including Maison Foo, the Multi-Faith Centre Derby, Womens Work Derbyshire and Craft & Chat Ashbourne. Workshops held at Derby Museum & Art Gallery and the Museum of making were supported by the Museums’ Volunteers enabling us to operate drop-in sessions inviting participants of all ages and abilities to take part.
October 2023 – ‘Cherished Hearts’ – Creative workshop for Heart of the Nation Exhibition, Migration Museum
Cherish: adore, appreciate, love, revere, esteem, admire, look after, tend, protect, preserve, shelter, support, nurture, treasure, harbour, nurse, remember.
Cherished Hearts was a workshop developed in response to the Migration Museum’s exhibition Heart of the Nation. Through the creation of soft, tactile, comforting, slow-stitched hearts, participants from Leicester’s diaspora community were provided with a safe and supportive space in which to connect with the complex narratives explored within the exhibition and consider these in relation to their own personal experiences of migration, working within and using the NHS.
January – May 2023 – The Brailsford Bayeux
The Brailsford Bayeux was a community stitch project which brought together the people of Brailsford & Ednaston in celebration and commemoration of the coronation of HRH Charles III. The project was commissioned by Brailsford and Ednaston Churches Together, facilitated by myself and supported by a host of volunteers.
The aim was to create a narrative embroidery inspired by the Bayeux Tapestry which documented the crowning of King Charles III and celebrated the wonderful but changing rural villages of Brailsford and Ednaston.
Drawing on the design and methods used to make The Bayeux Tapestry, I designed the central panel depicts an imagined scene of the Coronation Day with King Charles, Queen Camilla and the Archbishop of Canterbury taking centre stage. A celebratory parade of local social groups waving flags, stream from the villages community meeting places. This central story is surrounded by a patchwork of squares which are a response to the question ‘What do you love about Brailsford and Ednaston?’.
The project invited residents from the villages and those with a connection to the location to take part through drop-in workshops, stitching sessions, take away stitch packs and school workshops. The resulting narrative embroidery is a whopping 10.85 meters long. 282 people participated in the project, ranging from just 2 years old to 94 years wise. 406 squares were donated in total (plus one extra from the Right Reverend Libby, Dean of Derby Cathedral) and the central panel was worked by 26 women in just 7 weeks.
Whilst the tangible results of this project are impressive the social impact on the community has been invaluable. It has brought together a fractured community, improved social connectedness and mental and emotional well-being, encouraged multi-generational sharing and learning, new skills have been learned (both practical and social) and participants feel more connected with the place they call home.
A series of videos documenting the making on The Brailsofrd Bayeux can be found here…
December 2021 – Christmas Workshop for Refugee Women @ Upbeat Communities
Stitching has a way of bringing people together, despite difference. It provides space to express and explore but also opens routes of communication. This fun and relaxed session offered participants with a chance to learn and share skills, discuss cultural celebrations whilst building individual confidence and a sense of community.
June 2021 – Reclaim the Night Community Banner Making
Throughout June Women from across Derbyshire came together to create an incredible banner to be carried at the 2021 Reclaim the Night March through Derby city center. Stitch sessions were held at a variety of venues from parks and gardens to cafes and dining rooms. Collaborative sessions such as these always provide an incredible opportunity to explore and discuss difficult subjects. Whilst not all participants were able to join the march women were able to make their voices heard through the act of stitch.
2020 – Veiled Voices
Veiled Voices 2020 was an inclusive community embroidery project, which invited women across the UK to come together and explore perceptions of Hijab wearing in Britain, with the aim of creating understanding and friendship. Over 12 months, more than 100 women took part, together creating a beautiful document of conversations, thoughts, learning and new friendships. You can find out more via the project blog here. The finished embroidered hijab is currently on display at Derby Museum & Art Gallery as part of its Derbyshire Women History Makers exhibition.
Every Stitch A Story 