Over the Covid 19 pandemic I have coordinated and co-facilitated a weekly online Women Group with migrant and refugee women as part of my role at the South London Refugee Association (SLRA). The group became an important space of care and solidarity during the pandemic, in which participants were supporting and learning from each other.
To create our ‘Women Group Quarantine Quilt’, with a group of community volunteers we distributed over 40 bags with sewing material and over the course of a year, everyone was working on their piece from home by themselves or in a group during our online sessions. In spring 2021, we collected the different sections and sewed them together into this unique piece of storytelling.
Image: Installation view, ‘We Are A Group of Excellent Women’, Andy Stagg, 2022.
In March 2022 the quilt was displayed at the South London Gallery in a collaboration with the Feminist Library. As part of the exhibition at the South London Gallery, we organised a community workshop and panel discussions with some of the quilt artists about their activisms and artistic practices.
Images: Community Workskop, federivas, 2022.
Accompanying the quilt, we created a Women Group zine. For the zine we spoke to the women who participated in the project about what the quilt symbolises for them, what inspired them to make their pieces and what their hopes are for the future. The resulting artwork and the stories behind the different quilt pieces are as diverse as the members of our group themselves. The zine also contains poems and artwork by the Women Group members, as well as a creative archive of the online Women Group sessions.
If you want to support the on-going and much needed frontline support, immigration advice, and community engagement projects by the South London Refugee Association, visit their website to find out more and donate.