artworkshop-blog

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FoP October / November 2019: Gifts of Protest

For the past two sessions of FoP we have been inspired by stories of activists and change makers whose stories are not heard loudly enough. In October we were interested in finding out about black activists around the time of Peterloo, which has been our theme for the year. We looked at the collections in PHM to find the stories of William Cuffay, William Davidson and Robert Wedderburn, each significant in the fight for rights in Britain in 1800s. Cuffay and Wedderburn were also tailors, so we felt a connection with cloth. We made simple keyrings in the session, featuring a hashtag of each name, and left these in the museum for people to take and learn about, a way of disseminating information through a gift of protest.

In November we developed this further, opening the conversation out to other under-represented activists we could learn more about. Participants came with their homework - to research a change maker and bring this information to share with the rest of the group. Everyone contributed such interesting stories, people who were working in so many different areas of society to protect rights, create community, fighting for justice. We made needle holder cases decorated with these names and images. A practical object, this a way of incorporating these people and messages into everyday life, a conversation starter, a personal reminder, a token of thanks.  

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FoP September 2019: Protest Pincushions

All the best things come from a place of necessity. Our lack of pin cushions in the workshop made a good starting point for one day project, something that we could explore through Craftivism, ideas of hope and protection, and our love of our working space.

I was interested in the WW1 Sweetheart Pincushions, made by soldiers in the trenches for their loved ones at home, out of anything that they could lay their hands on. These were beautiful objects which spoke of a sense of protection and hopefulness in challenging times. I read an interesting blog post from craftivist, Betsy Greer, which though not exactly relating to craftivism, felt like a good lens through which to consider these objects. 

We talked about the idea of protection and hope for values and rights that we can often take for granted, things that can ever so easily be unravelled, as we have witnessed recently on the proroguing of Parliament. 

We made our pincushions with a craftivist’s mind, thinking and contemplating, what actions we might take, big or small, to help the cause, whatever that might be. The beautiful results were examples of personal stories, to be gifted to loved ones, or responsive political messages to be used and discussed within future FoP sessions!

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FoP August 2019: Liberty Caps

For the past two months FoP has been engaged in Liberty Cap making. The Liberty Cap was a symbol adopted by the working class people of Peterloo, having not long since seen these caps worn by the working class of the French Revolution. A symbol of revolution, a change to systems that didn’t represent them, the Liberty Cap was seen on top of wooden pikes in the crowds that gathered at Peterloo.

As part of a larger project organised by the Peterloo Massacre Memorial Campaign, “Rise” promised to be the largest gathering of liberty caps, encouraging people to make and parade their caps on the weekend anniversary of Peterloo.

Our Liberty Caps highlighted people, campaigns and statements that participants wanted to remember, support or say. They were beautifully and thoughtfully made, of red and gold, and paraded on an unusually sunny Manchester afternoon on top of umbrellas (we’re not daft).

The parade was uplifting and thought provoking. A carnival style band played ballads and protest songs, whilst balancing paper mache floats as well as musical instruments! And we finally got to see the Peterloo Memorial, a piece of public art designed by artist Jeremy Deller. Not fully finished yet, due to the controversial overlooked accessibility of the monument, I think when finished, it will fit in to our radical city well.

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FoP June 2019: Wooly Liberals!

Disruptive knitting? What’s that? you might say. In our latest Fabric of Protest workshop, we knitted with twigs, trimmings, plastic, even using spaghetti as needles! THIS is disruptive knitting. 

Working together, knit expert alongside novice, we created a piece of collective knit, featuring the inimitable words of Greta Thunberg (climate activist and all round teenage hero) “Is my microphone on? Can you hear me?”. These words were part of a speech, addressing the room to see if people were listening, were able to hear, as though this may be the reason for inaction.

We felt like these words could be applied to so many injustices, inequalities not least Peterloo. We knitted to celebrate World Wide Knit in Public Day, to create something together as a group, and to acknowledge all the voices that get drowned out by injustice.

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FoP March 2019: The Women of Peterloo

This month, The Fabric of Protest workshop was in the same week as International Women’s Day, so we looked at the involvement of women at Peterloo.

Women were significant at Peterloo in a number of ways.  Female Reform Societies were springing up all over the north of England, and in towns around Manchester. Women were organising themselves politically to support the call for suffrage for the men in their lives.

Women were present in great numbers on the day of the Peterloo Massacre, bringing with them their children, all dressed in their best with many women dressed in white.  As the violence broke out, women were disproportionally injured by the cavalry.  Margaret Downes, Mary Heyes and Martha Partington are all included in the list of those who lost their lives at Peterloo.

There is a beautiful mural commissioned by PHM, on the exterior canal side wall of the museum, which features a woman and child.  Whilst the image stands as a symbol of the women who were present and involved at Peterloo, the woman in the image is the Mancunian daughter of a Windrush victim, an acknowledgement of the injustices still happening today.

Continuing our work on the mind map collage, we discussed women at the time of Peterloo, focussing on the conditions of these working women at this time.  One participant brought in a map of where her ancestor, Martha, had lived her whole life, up and down Barrack Street in Manchester.  She talked of the space that Martha occupied; the small and cramped living conditions.  Our youngest participant being shocked by the idea of 15 families sharing a toilet.

The mind map is growing, ideas flowing as the conversations weave in and out of the studio.  I love the rumination that happens in between sessions, when we come together and talk about what thoughts have been stirred by the previous month’s session.

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FoP February 2019: Remembering Peterloo

We have started the year remembering the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, where thousands of people gathered in Manchester to campaign for democracy. They were met with violence from the yeomanry, and what was meant to be a beautiful, peaceful, hopeful day ended in bloodshed and despair.

It’s 200 years since Peterloo and the People’s History Museum will be marking this with an exhibition opening in March. The Fabric of Protest group will be working on this theme throughout the year, but with such a big subject, where do we begin..?

In this session, we began with a fabulous if not heartbreaking Living Histories performance of Peterloo, where we learnt about the different accounts of Peterloo by witnesses. Did the masses provoke violence? Did the yeomanry plan to charge? Who was to blame? 

Back in the learning studio, we talked about things that resonated with us, reminded of the Hillsborough disaster, about poverty, how that looks today and how it is still punished, and the power of inequality.

In groups and individually, participants began to make patches of fabric illustrating thoughts and ideas from Peterloo. These patches will be forming a larger textile mind map of our explorations of Peterloo over the next year. We hope people can see this and add to the map throughout the year, so watch this space!

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FoP December 2018: Protest Arrows

So another year comes to a close! We have been working on these protest arrows for the last few sessions, looking at the arrow as a symbol of resistance and solidarity used by the Suffragettes and supporters of their cause.

We looked at the Represent! exhibition at People’s History Museum for inspiration, finding out about groups working and campaigning for better representation in the UK. From this, participants made their own arrows which explored issues that they felt strongly about, using an array of fantastic textile techniques. 

And we ate mince pies. 

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FoP September 2018: Exhibition Closing

With the closing weekend of the exhibition, we thought it was a good opportunity to reflect on the whole experience. Choosing one word to sum this up (difficult I know), we stitched these onto patches which were then stitched together to form a reflective patchwork. This piece expressed how we felt about the work that we made, the experience of exhibiting and how this was received. A beautiful piece in it’s own right I think.

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FoP July 2018: Exhibition Opening!!!

The day finally arrived - our exhibition opened following a week of printing, sticking, planning and installing, and it looks incredible! With lots of help from workshop participants and staff at the People’s History Museum, the exhibition opened with a day of workshops and tours of the show. We had a knit station where people were shown finger knitting and french knitting, and another making station with a variety of fabric, stamps and thread to embellish messages of protest onto.  

Participants and exhibitors were so proud of their work and involvement in the overall show, and visitors to the exhibition had such insightful and encouraging comments. It was great to meet new people that we will hopefully see again in future FoP workshops!

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FoP May 2018: MORE Protest Bunting

This session we all came together to continue the joy of crafting even more protest bunting. Collage skills, magazines, bondaweb and printing foil at the ready, these were the results...

The bottom photo is a sneak preview of one of the participant’s exhibition pieces (coming soon!)  - a garment detail that looks outwards as well as towards the wearer.

Not long until exhibition deadline now!

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FoP April 2018: Protest Bunting

Protest bunting was our activity today, headed by our fantastic textile expert volunteers Meghan, Cath and Jess. Whilst lots more exhibition prep took place for one half of the group, the other half got to grips with slogans, collage and the political potential of these small fabric triangles!

In addition to this we had a great presentation by Sally Amberton to get to grips with some basic ideas on social media and communicating about our forthcoming exhibition. So good to have such talented and experienced people attend our groups!

Photo credit: Sally Amberton

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FoP March 2018: Happy International Women’s Day!

In the year that celebrates the 100 year anniversary of the Representation Act, it seemed appropriate that one of our participants at the Fabric of Protest would come with sash and rosette, purple green and white! 

The session this month was split in two, one group worked on planning the forthcoming exhibition (7th July - save the date!) whilst the other group made exhibition bunting! This group was led by Manchester School of Art students, using collage to make large bunting, composing images from fabric, newspapers and magazines.

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FoP February 2018: Felting February

We took a look a the new banner hang in the People’s History Museum, featuring some incredibly beautiful and powerful banners, including our very own Match Girl Strike commemoration banner! It was a great surprise for some of our participants who worked on the banner to see.

Our fantastic craft expert Mandy took the rest of the session, showing us how to do felting, where we made felted flowers in suffragette colours. It was very satisfying to see results so quickly and people developed their own compositions with ease. So lucky to have such talented and creative people in the group!

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FoP January 2018! Stitch a Tree

The first session of the year! We contributed, in this session, to project created by artist Alice Kettle called Stitch a Tree which aims to connect communities and individuals across the UK to show support for displaced people around the world. The instructions were to stitch any kind of tree on a piece of linen provided, using any kinds of stitches. The diverse range of trees in our mini forest was impressive! From first time stitchers to seasoned pro’s, everyone made a tree, which will be hung together with contributions from all over the country in an exhibition at the Whitworth Art Gallery in September.

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FoP December 2017: The Winter of our Stitched Dissent!

Our Winter Celebrations started with a showreel of work participants have created over the past year, together with a few Christmas tunes (eventually) and the odd mince pie. It was a great end to the year, taking a break from our usual work to make some anti-christmas/consumerist decorations (or real ones for those who felt festive!)

The group has produced some amazing work this year and have contributed so much to make it an excited and relevant art collective. This was rewarded by the best news, we will be showing our work in an exhibition at the Museum sometime in 2018! Eyes peeled for further details...

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FoP November 2017: Exhibition proposal

We were joined this session by Mark Wilson who is Exhibitions Officer at the People’s History Museum, giving us guidance of how exhibitions are put on at the museum. It was really interesting given the deadline is looming to put our proposal in...fingers crossed....

And a couple of images from one participant’s recent feelings towards what has been dominating the news. A sentiment shared by many don’t you think??

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FoP October 2017 - What would you strike for? 

I posed this question to newcomers in the group as a starting point for work in the session. These were some of the responses. It was good to see the Match women resurfacing from the box of fabric, together with the foot for marching.

A busy session, we saw people getting on with work for the 2018 exhibition and newcomers experimenting with textiles and print to give inspiration for a new banner they are looking to make. Almost too much activity to comment on, and not enough time to speak to everyone unfortunately but a good buzz of creativity in the room.

I had wanted to show this excellent film on the Grunwick Strike of 1976 but we were too fevered with making to sit quietly and take it in. A must watch though.