Processions, Suffragette March, Artichoke Trust & The Turner Contemporary

On the 10th of June 2018, over 100,000 women participated in a celebration of the Suffragettes and the Suffragists in marches across Great Britain. It was a mass participation artwork, which celebrated one hundred years of votes for women. 100 female artists were commissioned by Artichoke Trust and 14-18 NOW to work with organisations and communities across the UK to create banners for Processions. I was commissioned to work with Turner Contemporary to make a banner. Together with 5 students from UCA Canterbury, POW! Thanet (Power of Women) Arts Festival and people from the Margate community I created a large-scale banner that was sewn, painted and embroidered. Each of the participants made a panel, which I put together to represent all of us and the women we were celebrating. We didn’t only create a banner but an entire performance, which included costumes, chants and ringing bells to establish our presence. While many of the banners in the march were amazing ours stood out through our presence, performance, colours and scale. We were featured in several news items on local and national television as well as in newspapers. From my participation in the Processions project, I was later commissioned to create another procession. This one to be the opening event for the POW! Thanet Arts Festival on the 8th of March 2018 International Women’s Day). The procession that I created, led a group of over 250 people from Margate Station to Turner Contemporary. For this commission I worked with several groups in the community to create banners. They included UCA Canterbury, primary and secondary schools, Mencap, Ageless Thanet, the Soropotists, the WASPIs and the Margate WI. After the procession the banners were all exhibited in different locations around Thanet.