Mending the Gap on International Women’s Day by Jimena Pardo
8th March 2021
It was a pleasure to lead this session on such an important day not just because it was International Women’s Day but also as it marked a return to face to face teaching in schools. In this ‘Mending the Gap’ CPD session we talked about textiles as a reparative act with the potential for healing during difficult events such as loss due to Covid -19.
Participants quietly stitched as I shared images of patches made in the ‘stitch for change’ project. I shared a bit about my project ‘ Bordando por la Memoria’, an archive of testimonies from the dictatorship in Chile which used inspiration from the Chilean Arpilleras of the ’80s and the idea of recording traumatic events in a gentle, slow and authentic way using textiles.
The zoom mood was calm with many people taking a quiet ‘time out’ from work and family life. One group zoomed in directly from college and they jumped straight into stitching what had kept them going through lockdown. Amongst the things we stitched about were walks in nature, intimate family moments, and a more personal patch that was made about loss.
What did we learn? Well from my part I learned that the silences are also important as spaces in which we observe, slow down and create. Not everybody wanted to share, but that was OK. Experiences can vary and only a month ago the CPD group had shared feelings of being overwhelmed with zooms. In contrast, this group had enjoyed being at home with family and had found positives in the online teaching and learning process.
There were many beautiful outcomes from the session and the experiences that were shared spoke of the little things that held everything together.
These CPD sessions were put together to accompany the exhibition All in the Same Storm; Pandemic Patchwork Stories and was also made to complement the learning resource which is now available to download from here . The learning resource was co produced by Jimena Pardo, Janey Moffatt and the De La Warr Pavilion.
Other resources included are a video of stitching techniques (see below) which can be used in conjunction with the activities in the Learning Resource. We would love to see any outcomes produced by using the resource so please tag @stitch_for_change if you create or make something.
Jimena Pardo
Top image by Hannah Ford
Posted by sally on Thursday 25 March 2021