Exhibitions
The full list of current and planned exhibitions is on our website, at http://lovingearth-project.uk/events-2/.
Exhibitions took place earlier this year in Bournemouth, Portcullis House (Houses of Parliament), Ashburton, Richmond (North Yorkshire) Ludlow and Totnes/Brent as well as a major exhibition at several venues in California!
Here are some highlights (in date order):
Bournemouth- Loving Earth volunteers teamed up with the local Parks Foundation and held workshops in a tent in the park and in a café when the weather was bad. This involved the local community in making textile panels expressing concerns about local issues. Friends were invited to a stitch group held once a month in a café (this is still ongoing).
The exhibition of 50 panels combined national panels and those produced locally, teamed up with Park to hold several panel making sessions. This seemed to work really well.
Portcullis House- our exhibition in the Houses of Parliament was seen by many MPs. The Speaker of the House of Commons had asked for it to be held there and he was there helping promote it. We even got a short slot on the radio 4 ‘Sunday’ programme:
https://lovingearth-project.uk/2023/02/27/bbc-radio-4-segment-on-the-loving-earth-project/
More about this event with video of the Speaker:
https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/loving-earth-textiles-highlighting-threats-to-natural-world-comes-to-westminster
California - this involved lots of venues and wide ranging audiences. The exhibitions have only just finished so feedback is awaited and will be included in the next newsletter.
Richmond , Yorkshire- this project Loving Earth - Healing Through Creativity, has involved the Loving Earth Project and a local refugee support group of volunteers and women and children from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan who are resettling in Richmondshire. The project has been led by community textile artist, Kathryn Guy.
Over the past year, Kathryn has delivered textile workshops to local women and children resettled in the area, where all have engaged successfully with the themes of the Loving Earth Project. These have produced many wonderful examples of creative upcycling displayed alongside panels from the Loving Earth Project.
Salford - this exhibition was eventually held at Media City at the University of Salford and experienced several delays due to the building being flooded. Staff from the Creative digital media department organised the very eye-catching continuous digital display of panels which ran throughout the exhibition on a big screen, with the actual textile panels on either side. They also gave a great deal of thought to another visual display with environmental themes by the artist in residence at the other campus, Mishka Henner.
Well done to all the volunteers and staff for persevering to make this happen! https://www.salford.ac.uk/news/inspirational-textiles-that-raise-awareness-of-climate-change-to-go-on-display-at-university
Ashburton and later South Brent and Totnes- this exhibition brought 8 Local Quaker meetings together to collaborate on a wide ranging project around Loving Earth and is still ongoing.
Ludlow- a relatively short but welcome exhibition in a new area for us, this project had great support from local churches and the Ludlow21 group.
Exhibitions will shortly be taking place at various venues in Devon, Alnwick, Chichester, Nailsworth and Gloucester and we have a series planned in the London area which will use most of the panels! See the website for details.
A group of panels are heading for France and Belgium (with texts translated into French). The French exhibitions and workshops have already started. This is exciting and there is a possibility of further developments n France next year.
Our funding ceases at the end of 2023. These funds have allowed us to develop many aspects of the project and cover the cost of sending panels to exhibition locations including some outside the UK. However, we are hoping that we will retain some of the panels in fixed groupings for exhibition over the next year at least.
If you would like to hold an exhibition next year, please contact us as soon as possible. Please look at the advice on the exhibitions page http://lovingearth-project.uk/exhibitions/ but note we will be providing a fixed batch of panels- you will not be able to request specific panels. We are particularly interested in exhibiting in areas we have not visited- Birmingham area and the Midlands generally have not had many yet!
Please do keep sending us images and texts for any new panels you make. We would love to add them to our online gallery.
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