I’ve been sewing a “Refugees Welcome” banner for a #refugeeswelcome demo in Oxford this Sunday. It’s a task I am highly unqualified for! I did my best, but must confess to a huge sense of relief on passing on the second phase of stitching to a wonderful friend called Alex, who can whizz it together on her sewing machine in a fraction of the time.
This is because it took an inordinate length of time to design this first ever attempt at banner-making and it is wholly idiosyncratic in construction – as I have to work out how to make things as I make them. The wobbly hand stitching doesn’t bear close inspection either and there were moments I was sharply reminded of the agony of embroidery and knitting classes in my primary school years. The inevitable knot and tangle, and the not knowing why I was so clumsy and useless – forever losing my way and snagging up – it would be decades before dyscalculia and dyspraxia would become the familiar words with which I could finally explain it.
Yet this has felt like one of the most important activities I could engage in, spending the day trying to get it right for the Syrian refugees, stitching laboriously with my laptop at my side thereby keeping up to date with the news. My plan was to stitch and tweet and send my never more timely film, Without You I Would Not Exist, out again and again onto social media platforms. I wanted people to know how much kindness matters when you have nothing, and about what happens next when someone chooses to be altruistic and bountiful. I wanted people to engage with the human – not only in terms of need (the there but for the grace of God go I) but also the benefit to society of allowing the refugees into our country. There is a long term, and if refugees stay they can make careers, have families, become carers and contribute to the culture.
It was an extraordinarily thought provoking and rich day despite my un-nimble fingers. It was mediative yet I engaged with events. Through it I feel connected again, after the long Summer vacation, to my purpose in working with Spanish Civil War history, forming a bridge into the contemporary. I am at heart both artist and activist in my small way. My practice must stay relevant and connected.
When I bought the calico background fabric from Darn it and Stitch in Oxford (http://www.darnitandstitch.com) I met artist in residence Felicity Ford whose work and project The Fabric of Oxford, you can learn about on the following link.
http://www.knitsonik.com/the-fabric-of-oxford/
Felicity, not only interviewed me for her project when she learned about the refugee banner, but she also kindly donated a gorgeous piece of fabric, which I fashioned into E’s. Felicity thereby becomes part of the banner and her generosity entwines with the sentiments of the demonstration, against government policy. When Felicity interviewed me I realised that I had only visualised the banner one way – as a homely, stitched item, showing care and making reference to the domestic through the use of fabric remnants such as you would find in comfortable home furnishings. The very stuff that has been lost in this human tragedy.
I wanted this banner to say “welcome” through every fibre, not only through the words stitched on it. The act of making it this way, rather than painting on the message quickly and effortlessly feels important both as a ritual and symbolically as well. I want to join the groundswell of public opinion towards a humanitarianism our present government doesn’t seem to have understood or anticipated. The march against the global domination monetary values takes up here. This demonstration, with its many #refugeeswelcome banners will serve more practically to lever opinion locally to take in our quota of refugees. Oxfordshire has opened it arms before when in May of 1937 Basque refugees, children in flight from fascist Spain needed homes and schooling. This was all through voluntary effort and against government policy.
When governments won’t do the right thing, we the people can.
