Derby Museums, 2023–2026 – Stitching Community Voice into the Museum
The Quilt of Connection is a collaborative textile artwork created with the people of Derby and Derbyshire in response to History Makers: Unfolded at Derby Museums.
Developed through a series of workshops, conversations, and contributions across the city, the project invited participants to reflect on a simple but powerful question: What is your story, and how would you like it to be told?
The result is a large-scale, slow-stitched quilt, made not by one artist, but by many, placing lived experience, memory, and community voice at the heart of the museum.
The Project
Emerging from earlier work in History Makers: A Celebration of Derbyshire Women and Gender Diversity, this project responds to a critical question: whose stories are missing from our museums, and what happens when space is made for them to be told?
Through a series of fully facilitated workshops and open invitations to contribute, participants were encouraged to share their stories through cloth, adding fragments of fabric that held personal meaning. These were not just materials, but carriers of memory: pieces of clothing, household textiles, and fabrics that held deep emotional significance.
The project reached beyond the museum walls, working across Derby and Derbyshire with a wide range of communities, including refugee groups, women experiencing domestic abuse, and individuals who may feel excluded from traditional cultural spaces. Workshops took place in community settings, support organisations, and within museum galleries, creating multiple points of access and meeting people where they felt most comfortable.
What emerged was a process grounded in trust and care. Participants brought with them textiles that told powerful, often deeply personal stories, garments worn during migration journeys, fabrics connected to loved ones, or materials that marked moments of change, loss, or survival. Some chose to carefully cut fragments from the clothes they were wearing, embedding their present selves directly into the work.
Alongside these contributions, reclaimed materials such as bed sheets and tablecloths formed the foundation of the quilt, objects already rich with associations of home, intimacy, and human connection. Layer by layer, these fragments were stitched together, holding stories of love, migration, family, resilience, and belonging.
In this way, the quilt became more than a collaborative artwork. It became a space where lived experience could be held, shared, and honoured, transforming personal histories into a collective, visible presence within the museum.
What We Created
- A large-scale, collaboratively stitched quilt, built from hundreds of personal contributions across Derby and Derbyshire
- A textile collage of lived experience, created from reclaimed fabrics and deeply meaningful personal materials
- A growing archive of stories and reflections, capturing the voices behind each stitched fragment
Each piece of fabric carries a story. Some are drawn from everyday materials—bed sheets and tablecloths—while others hold far more personal histories: garments worn during migration, clothing connected to loved ones, or pieces cut from what participants were wearing in the moment of making.
Together, these fragments form a layered and intimate portrait of a city—one shaped not by a single narrative, but by many voices. Stories of love, loss, resilience, displacement, identity, and belonging sit side by side, stitched into a shared surface.
What has been created is not only a quilt, but a collective act of storytelling, a work that holds memory, honours lived experience and makes visible the voices so often absent from museum collections.
Approach
At the core of the project is slow stitching—a calm, accessible process using simple hand stitches. There is no right or wrong way to take part. The focus is on:
- Process over perfection
- Reflection and self-expression
- Creating space for conversation and connection
Drawing on the philosophy of wabi-sabi, participants were encouraged to embrace imperfection, reuse materials, and find meaning in the stories held within cloth.
Impact
Community Voice in the Museum
Participants contributed their own stories directly into a museum-held artwork—shifting representation from historical interpretation to lived experience.
Connection & Belonging
Workshops created space for conversation, listening, and shared understanding across diverse communities.
Wellbeing & Reflection
The gentle, repetitive nature of stitching supported mindfulness, emotional expression, and personal storytelling.
Access & Inclusion
No prior experience was needed, enabling people of all ages and backgrounds to take part—including those often underrepresented or excluded from traditional heritage spaces.
Legacy
The Quilt of Connection is now on display at the Museum of Making, marking a significant moment where community-authored work is held within a cultural institution.
- The quilt represents a collective response to History Makers: Unfolded
- A book of participant reflections accompanies the work
- The project embeds community narratives into the museum’s ongoing story
Reflection
What makes the Quilt of Connection so significant is the shift it represents. Rather than interpreting history for communities, this project creates space for people to author their own place within it.
Through slow, shared making, participants reflected on identity, belonging, and memory—often sharing stories that might otherwise remain unheard. The act of stitching became a way to process experience, connect with others, and see personal narratives as valuable and worthy of being held within a museum.
The process itself was as important as the final piece. Conversations unfolded alongside stitches; relationships formed through shared time and attention. The quilt grew not just through fabric, but through listening, care, and collective presence. Now displayed within the museum, the work stands as a powerful reminder that history is not fixed, it is continually shaped by the voices we choose to include.
Every Stitch A Story 