Mothers Who Make Coventry
Sinéad Patching, Mothers Who Make a Garden Dahlia Planting Workshop, 2023. Courtesy: Sinéad Patching.
Mothers Who Make Coventry Hub is dedicated to supporting the dual roles of mothers/birth-givers and care-givers who are also makers/artists/creative people, in the West Midlands and Warwickshire region.
The Hub aims to connect local mothers through peer support meetings, workshops, artist talks, publishing, exhibition trips, and much more, in a hybrid curation of online and in-person events to increase access.
From January 2021 onwards Coventry Biennial have supported the development and delivery of the Hub’s activity, building on this support the Hub and its members will present a significant, co-created project as a part of Coventry Biennial 2023.
MOTHERS WHO MAKE COVENTRY WITH ALICE WOOD
While Developing Coventry Biennial 2023 Mothers Who Make Coventry have delivered a programme of peer support meetings as well as a range of workshops marking the beginning of the co-creation of the Mothers Who Make a Garden project.
The project began through collaboration with Alice Wood, a Coventry based self-taught gardener with huge amounts of enthusiasm for turning unloved areas of the city, including her own back garden, into beautiful spaces filled with colour and wildlife.
This development of the project has been documented in a limited edition zine titled Mothers Who Make a Garden: The Dreaming. Copies of the zine can be requested (while stocks last) by emailing adele@coventrybiennial.com. The work is also expanded upon through their contribution of a chapter to Volume One of our new series of publications.
You can hear more about the project in this short film:
MOTHERS WHO MAKE COVENTRY WITH CAROLINE HACKETT
Following a hand-embroidery workshop held at Allesley Walled Garden, Coventry, in May 2023 led by Warwickshire-based textile artist Caroline Hackett, participants individually developed pieces which were later brought together in a collaborative design session in the context of the development of the Mothers Who Make a Garden project.
Taking an interest in the details, colour, texture, shape and pattern found in clothing and fabrics, the recent slow fashion movement has also influenced Caroline’s work. She repurposes scraps of fabric by embellishing them with hand stitching and beading. She is interested in the Japanese art of Sashiko stitching and boro mending.
Caroline has been a long-term member of Mothers Who Make Coventry, joining at its founding meeting at The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in May 2019.