Collaborative Making
Taking part in Jamboree 2018 allowed me to be part of the main event, as both participant and observer. Workshops such as Lucy Steggals and the crochet session to work in lines or circles and how this then became a performative and reflective space at the same time.
Thinking through making and involving other people and communities has been an aspect of my work over the last few years through different commissions and site-specific projects. The connection between places and people has often been through the use of making, bringing different materials into place as a way of realizing an idea but also creating a new story and history of the place.
An example of this was a commission with Metal in Peterborough http://www.metalculture.com based on the theme of Harvest http://caitlinheffernan.co.uk/portfolio/harvest-wain-procession-female-diamond-portraits/, inspired by folklore and past rituals, our connections to the land and food production. I used the local Saint Peter’s Cathedral ceiling and its diamond-shaped medieval bosses as inspiration to create portraits celebrating women and their role in Harvest production, which were then sewn into a series of processional cloths and capes that celebrated women. These were then paraded by local women during the Harvest Wain procession through central Peterborough.
Further symbolic imagery relating to the seasonal fruits, flowers and ‘God’s eyes’ (a pagan symbol of the elements and fertility) were embedded within each symbolic cape and were produced in collaboration with local craft collective, Handmade in Peterborough, and the Women’s Institute over several months via events and workshops. Collectively we all worked with a choreographer who brought together the different groups to create the procession.
Central to the work was the amazing contributions and participation of the craft collective, Handmade in Peterborough who were completely on board and gave a 100% in particular the poet Keely Mills and of course the Women’s Institute who got lots of people on board.
The Jamboree Event has highlighted the fantastic range of artists working across disciplines working to involve and include people.
