Matchbox City is Go!

We are delighted to announce that we have been successfully awarded funding from Arts Council England for our latest project Matchbox City!

Matchbox City is an ambitious participatory project using sculpture, animation and storytelling to explore ideas about the current housing crisis and notions of home. Engaging people from across the North West and collaborating with people affected by homelessness, a series of sculptural installations will spring up in unexpected places each with their own story to tell.  

Connecting Threads will collaborate with clients from the Booth Centre in Manchester, Crisis Skylight Merseyside, James Lee House in Warrington and Petrus in Rochdale to create sculptures as backdrops for stop-motion animation and both indoor and outdoor installations. Through a series of public workshops, people will be invited to contribute

their own sculptural buildings and figures to the growing Matchbox City. 

After a year of planning and making connections with partner organisations, we are just about to start the first workshops to get the building of Matchbox City underway. We are so excited about the possibilities of our most ambitious project to date!

Matchbox City

We are currently developing an exciting project called Matchbox City, using creativity to explore ideas about the current housing crisis and notions of ‘home’. Working with people affected by homelessness and the wider public, we will create animated films and sculptural installations for exhibition in autumn 2014. It will be our most ambitious project to date. 

We have been meeting with some fantastic organisations who support people who are vulnerably housed such as Crisis, the Booth Centre and Petrus who are all interested in collaborating with Connecting Threads to make the project happen. We have also found some wonderful venues to exhibit the work created including the brilliant Brink in Liverpool. and Touchstones in Rochdale. Alongside indoor exhibitions we also have grand plans to bring sculptural artworks to a street corner near you! 

We are anxiously waiting to hear on the status of our funding application, but are itching to get  building the Matchbox City in 2014!

Crisis Skylight Merseyside

We had a brilliant time supporting some of the fantastic arts activities delivered by Crisis Skylight Merseyside in Liverpool as part of their Summer School programme. At the Bluecoat, Crisis members asked visitors 'who do you think you are?  and showed families how to create masks and flip books based on the theme of identity. At St Luke's 'Bombed Out' Church, Crisis members worked with arts organisation Urban Strawberry Lunch to try plastic fusion techniques. Using recycled plastic bags fused with heat, we created brightly coloured panels which will become part of a 'stained glass window' to be installed in the open window spaces of the building and illuminated during the winter months. 

It was fantastic to get to know some of the wonderfully creative clients from Crisis who shared their skills and ideas with the public so confidently. We are currently developing plans for our next Connecting Threads project and feel that this approach of peer learning and active skills sharing would be a great way to engage both clients affected by homelessness and the wider public. 

Our Growing Embroidery & The Next Steps ...

Earlier this spring Connecting Threads were invited to deliver a day of workshops and presentations for  MMU Manchester School of Art undergraduates interested in developing careers within community arts. We spoke about the different projects we have been involved with both individually and collaboratively since graduating from MSA's Embroidery degree in 2008. Our aim was to give an honest and realistic account of both the challenges and rewards of working within the arts and wellbeing sector in the current economic climate and some of the routes that are possible to take following graduation. The students were all engaged in their own work placements in community settings and it was interesting to hear about their different projects. 

Part of the session involved working on the Connecting Threads embroidered Manchester landscape from last year's exhibition. This proved to be an effective icebreaker as the participants got to know each other as they chatted, adding their marks and embroidery to the piece. The piece will get another outing as part of the Didsbury Arts Festival on Saturday 22nd June, between 1.30 - 4.30pm. Join us at Emmanuel Church in Didsbury to add your own doodles and stitches. 

After a busy 9 months working on our various projects, Connecting Threads are currently regrouping to develop our second project together and secure funding. We are meeting with some fantastic organisations who provide support to homeless and vulnerably housed people in the North West. We used the MMU day as an opportunity to test out some of our workshop ideas including the possibility of creating a 'matchbox city', the results were lovely and spurred us on to get that funding bid in. Keep watching this space for updates on our next project!

Tying up the Threads

We are very pleased with how well the exhibition at Mad Lab went. Many of the participants, whose work was exhibited, returned to the space to spend time adding drawings and stitches onto a huge length of fabric featuring an alternative Manchester landscape.  It was also great to see the participants interacting with the visitors, talking about the processes and ideas behind their work. 

Over the week, our rather monochrome printed landscape was transformed into a bright, vibrant scene complete with hot air balloons and the Red Arrows. One of the initial aims of the project was to make connections between people. Working together on the giant embroidery was an ideal way of bringing people together through a creative focus.

A big hit of the exhibition was a free gift of a hand printed canvas bag featuring designs created by the participants. Inside the bags were embroidery a kit, the idea was to encourage people to try embroidery as a way to customise the bag and as a relaxing way to spend time. It was often remarked during the exhibition that sitting together to stitch the large collaborative piece made people feel calm and relaxed. The atmosphere of Mad Lab was perfect and many of the participants affected by homelessness said that they wished there was permanent friendly and welcoming space to come for a stitch and a chat over a cup of tea.

During the week we met many people who were interested in the project and how we could work with their community groups. We got a strong sense that the large collaborative piece has a lot of scope to be toured around to different places, for many more people to add their marks and stitches to. People are really excited about the idea of seeing it displayed in a public building for all to see, and this is something we will certainly work on next.

 So, this is not the end of Connecting Threads! We’ll have a little rest after what has been a fantastic but very busy few months but we’ll plan our next move soon!  Watch this space for updates. 

We’d like to say some big thank yous-

To all of the visitors who supported us by coming to the exhibition and trying some embroidery!

To Mad Lab for providing a brilliant venue at very short notice and being such great hosts. 

To the Arts Council for funding the project. 

To Anna White for taking some beautiful photographs of the sessions and the exhibition.

To the staff from the Booth Centre, Life Matters and the Mustard Tree for supporting the participants to get involved and allowing us use their time and premises to deliver the sessions. 

Most of all thank you to the wonderfully talented participants who created such beautiful art work and got so enthusiastically on board!

The Connecting Threads Exhibition Goes Live!

Its been a whirlwind week! Monday saw our last session with the Mustard Tree where participants stitched their hearts out to ensure their work was ready for the exhibition. 

Thursday was a flurry of hammering nails, framing prints and applying vinyl letters as we began to install the work in the fantastic space at Manchester Digital Laboratory. We had help from some brilliant volunteers including students from the Manchester School of Art's Embroidery degree. On Friday, there was big push to get everything ready  for the arrival of the first guests at the preview.

Participating artists from the Booth Centre and the Mustard Tree spoke about how pleased they were to see their work framed, mounted and exhibited in a gallery space. The mood was celebratory as we toasted the project with some incredible mini cupcakes! Visitors were all very positive about the work and interested in the stories conveyed in the prints and embroideries.

A key interactive part of the exhibition is Follow the Thread a wall featuring an ongoing story initiated during the sessions with the groups. Each participant was asked to complete the sentence; 'On my way here I saw..'. We began to build up snapshots of life in the city. Visitors to exhibition are invited to contribute their own sights and ideas to the story. 

Connecting Threads at Manchester Digital Laboratory is open to the public from 16th - 22nd September (10-4pm Saturday and Sunday,  11-6pm weekdays). Join us for free creative activities in the space (and tea and cake!)

The Final Furlong

Last week we returned to the Mustard Tree after a short break for the bank holiday. Participants began to transfer their prints onto fabric and stitch into them. For some people it was the first time they had tried embroidery and they seemed to enjoy it! Unbelievably we only have one session left before the exhibition starts!

Last week also saw an epic frame buying mission and the fiddly process of mounting all of the textile pieces. We had fun printing onto a long length of calico, a huge imagined street scene composed from stencils of the participants' monoprints . This will form a major part of the participatory aspect of the Connecting Threads exhibition. We hope that visitors will add their own doodles and details onto the fabric using pens and embroidery, adding to the visual story. Bayeux Tapestry eat your heart out - this is the 'Manchester Tapestry'!