Cromer Street: O-Furoshiki Stitching Group
Free, drop-in
You are invited to participate in two workshops that will take place in early July at Arts Catalyst and to actively engage in the creation of a cloth that will be sent back to Fukushima as a gesture of reciprocity.
More information: http://www.artscatalyst.org/node/2495
Stitching, mending and communal processes of making can all contribute to the fabrication of a new societal language, a new means of communication amongst people and hands.
How can we generate a new imagery around ‘Fukushima’? How can we develop a creative language that supports and sustains a post-disaster or displaced community? Can our experience and collective will to overcome ecological difficulty be made manifest through stitching? In this respect, can art transcend function?
As part of the exhibition Real Lives Half Lives: Fukushima, Arts Catalyst invites members of different communities around Cromer Street as well as from across London to join us for two stitching sessions.
‘O-Furoshiki’ is a traditional type of Japanese wrapping cloth that features in the film Project Fukushima! Pieces of fabric, donated by people all over the country, are sewn together to create a patchwork cover over the floor. For each location where the 'Fukushima!' festival takes place, organisers bring together a group of local volunteers - as seen in the documentary. Not only do volunteers cover the floor of each venue with the patchwork cloth, they also measure the radiation level themselves in order to ensure it is safe to carry out the festival.
Project Fukushima! follows the preparations for a festival held in Fukushima city five months after the nuclear disaster. The festival, called simply ‘Fukushima!’ was organised by a group of artists and musicians including Yoshihide Otomo. They aim to give visibility to Fukushima’s current state just as it was. Throughout the film we see how the lives of people in Fukushima have changed and what the future might look like for the next few generations. Now the festival pops up all over the country and abroad, and has attracted more than 100,000 people.
You are invited to participate in two workshops that will take place in early July at Arts Catalyst and to actively engage in the creation of a cloth that will be sent back to Fukushima as a gesture of reciprocity. During each session Arts Catalyst will bring people from different communities and backgrounds together to help us reflect upon issues of displacement, migration and belonging in our area and beyond.
On July 15 the session will culminate in a celebration that will see the cloth being unfolded in Cromer Street and its surrounding areas, engaging neighbours and passers-by in communal conversation. More information on the celebration can be found here.
Workshop dates:
1 July, 2-5pm
15 July, 2-5pm
Workshops are free and open to all. These two initial sessions are the testing ground for a potential series of future meetings and events at Arts Catalyst and in the Kings Cross area that will explore issues of displacement and migration through the practice of weaving and stitching.
If you are interested in participating or require further information please email anna.santomauro@artscatalyst.org |
