Processions: Making the letters and tassels

So the plan had always been that we would have letters spelling out the phrase ‘Smile, it confuses your enemy’ individually decorated by the women.  These letters would then be placed on a digitally printed cloth featuring the smiles of 100 women that the women saw as role models or aspirational figures.

I had printed out the letters on paper to use as templates.  We cut them out and then the women choose letters.  Artichoke, organisers of the Processions march had asked for the suffragette colours of Violet, Green and White to be used.  I had bought a load of fabric in those colours and let the women choose what colour their letter might be.  They could decorate the letter however they wished…..and some really went to town with appliqué fabrics, jewels and chains.

Women hard at in in Holy Trinity, Shirebrook

So on some of the workshop session women were working on their letters whilst others were making wrapped cords that would be eventually be made into tassels that would form a fringe along the bottom of the banner or large tassels for the side poles.  The photo below shows the Rev Karen in action on a Pfaff Passport 2.0 sewing machine zigzagging strips of fabric to make wrapped cords.

Processions: Making the printed background

Collecting the 100 smiles was a challenge. The women’s personalities really came out. For example it became clear that Lovely Louise from Bolsover had a keen interest in Tudor history from her list of 16th century women.  Some women wanted family members, other figures from local history whilst others chose household names. We had writers, saints, comediennes, architects, explorers, business women, politicians, royalty, suffragettes, theologians, sportswomen, scientists and fictional characters.

What I found most interesting was that Olga and Basia thought the Polish women’s group facilitator’s list of women were not appropriate. The facilitator hadn’t attended any of the sessions and the list seemed to be TV celebrities or women famous for being married to a politician rather than for their own achievements. When asked who they wanted to see they produced a very interesting list of Polish ‘heroes’ that I had never heard of and one very interesting woman who I had. Now Bolsover and Shirebrook are former mining communities so Margaret Thatcher is a divisive character; I certainly wasn’t going to suggest her.  However she was top their list of strong inspirational women so I had to suppress my own personal opinions and let her on to the banner.

So the women either sent me images directly or names and I sourced images.  Sometimes this was a challenge as images weren’t of a definition that I could use so we had to find other images or rescan them.  I was compiling a folder of the images and gradually over a number of weeks we reached 100.

The smiles are arranged in alphabetical order of their first name.

Now my plan had always been to use the commercial printer that I had used on the first Bolsover project however Super Shirley from Shirebrook had a son who ran a print business that specialised in print on textiles for flags, banners and cushions and she arranged for him to print our background fabric for our banner.  With the deadline so tight, Shirley bought us at least a couple of weeks by sorting a very short lead time on the printing with the statement ‘He’ll do as his Mum says!’

The print was lovely and ready for our lettering which we had been working on.

The Banner: Banner and Banter Part 1

I was commissioned by Junction Arts to work on Banner and Banter.  This was a Heritage Lottery Funded project as part of a major regeneration of New Bolsover Model Village, 190 houses built on Model Village lines in the 1890s to house workers from the Bolsover Colliery.  Since the closure of the pit in the 1990s the houses have been looked after by Bolsover District Council.  The houses are currently being majorly refurbished with new rooves, windows, kitchens and bathrooms.

My project was to work with local residents who belong to the Heritage Craft Group to make a banner to mark this major landmark in the ‘Model’s’ history.  The inspirational starting point was the original National Union of Mineworkers banner that was made in the 1950s and now hangs in St Mary and St Laurence Church.  

There isn’t much of a provenance for this banner; we don’t know who it was made by but there were a number of companies that you could order banners from, selecting imagery from their catalogues or commissioning specific scenes.  They employed sign writers and backdrop painters who would work on their specific parts of the banner. The quality of the painting on the Bolsover banner shows real skill.  Union banners were often double sided; the front to signify the union branch and the back often to signify the benefits of belonging to a union.  In the case of the Bolsover banner the front shows a Cavalier and a Miner shaking hands with the Castle and the Colliery in the background.

This photo by John Harris shows the banner being used in the miner's strike of 1984-5.

We borrowed these replica banners from the Nottinghamshire Coalfields Banners Trust so we could have a good look at a range of other mining banners.  Thanks to Joan and John for lending them to us.