by Clare Hunter
For the community artists in Britain, it was the process that was key. Therein lay the politics. While the end product was important, it was the process of making and exhibiting a creation, and the local response to the artwork or performance, that were often prioritised. The sharing of the practical tasks like securing funding, identifying and negotiating the use of unusual locations, generating participation and promoting events, were also essential components, vital in the skilling-up of communities to enable them to organise future activities and projects independent of artists’ involvement. It required them to create art that was authentically authored by community in its design, purpose, value and impact. We called it cultural democracy: art shaped by the needs and concerns of local people that serviced the underprivileged, marginalised and unheard. Critics damned it as another form of social work; as ‘poor art for poor people’. But it pulled me in.
While the banner for the Buchanan Street Housing Association had been made in just a few sessions, they were enough to convince Anne that sewing had something useful to offer Leith’s beleaguered community. She decided to organise a more ambitious, longer-term project, something that could keep residents in touch with each other in a creative and sustained way. She called it Pictures of Leith, and what she had in mind was a sewn portrait of the neighbourhood, caught at a moment of change. It was its pilot panel she had brought to the launch of Material Matters; the end product was to emerge as a much more eclectic and large-scale affair, driven by the surprising enthusiasm of disparate individuals and groups eager to get involved. By the end, over 300 people contributed to what became a thirty-foot long triptych illustrating local life: Leith’s past, present and future, public events and personal memories.
One summer’s evening in 2018, Anne and I got together to revisit Pictures of Leith thirty years on. I took along a bottle of Prosecco to aid recall. Anne, much more sensibly, gathered together some photographs, reports and made an audio file of the soundtrack to its unveiling, a soundtrack I had totally forgotten about. She pulled out a photograph of an early workshop in the Buchanan Street centre. There is Gladys, the woman who had played patriotic tunes on the piano during the making of the Buchanan Street Housing Association banner and who, despite her avowals never to sew, did become involved in Pictures of Leith, helping to reconstruct her own community in fabric and thread, muttering criticisms and judgements as she did so. Gladys had been widowed when she was young, left with a family and a household to maintain on native wit alone. She was a woman with no time for nonsense and always ready with an opinion or six, but she was a stalwart in community terms and a fierce defender of local action. Her friend Chrissie is also in the photograph. Her husband had been killed in the Second World War and she, like Gladys, had improvised ways to thwart the threat of poverty. Unlike Gladys, Chrissie was a sociable woman and kept all those around her close. At the Pictures of Leith workshops she would scurry around sweeping up the debris of creativity, clearing space, clattering in the kitchen to set up another round of tea. She was the one who would bring in the home-made shortbread, the first to come and the last to leave. Nellie – the quiet one – sits beside them in the picture, alongside Rita, who always protested her inability to sew anything well, but would stow away work-in-progress in the depths of her handbag and return it the following week, not only beautifully stitched but also embellished with her own small touches of creative flair. These women were the core of the Pictures of Leith project.
So many different people had a story to tell or a portrait to share: the girls who worked in the chemists, the young mums campaigning for a playpark, the Asian Women’s Aid centre. And it wasn’t just women who sewed. The local bin men, men from the art club, the brothers who ran the fishmongers, members of the boys’ club and the boxing club, they all stitched a piece of their lives to go on the wall hanging. Anne and I sifted through the photographs, remembering local characters, struggling to recall names: Walter, the young unemployed man who came to offer his services as a photographer and stayed on to sew; Mike, the local bin man who became so enthused by the project he self-styled himself as its promoter and convinced others on his rounds to get involved; Mary, a stiff and formal woman who came regularly to the workshops but rarely spoke, applying her expert sewing skills to any task at hand; and there was the young lad whose name we have forgotten who hunted down scraps of leather to intricately fashion the bridle and reins of a fabric horse that represented the one that had once graced local gala days. Anne brought out a list of the panels, nearly 100, made by individuals and 60 local groups. There, among the more predictable images of local landmarks and historic events are more personal pictures: Friend of Alex, Sylvia at Work, Snooker Player, My Wedding.
Anne and I debated what the trigger had been to encourage such enthusiastic and wide-ranging participation from people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and interests, coming together to create a collective portrait of their neighbourhood. She thinks it was that the project offered not just an alternative, but also a striking contrast to people’s everyday lives. It was palpably inclusive, fun and creative, and it provided the opportunity to be active rather than passive, to give rather than receive, which, in a community largely dependent on social benefits, restored dignity and self-esteem. People contributed images that, cumulatively, portrayed their community as having more energy than was usually reported by consultants, councillors and the media. This was not a documentary of a community tainted by the ills of poverty, but a vivid portrait of a place with an interesting history and a dynamic and diverse community life. It was an assertion of local pride. Those involved – no matter their story – shared the same inheritance of a place. The project strengthened their sense of belonging together, of being linked not just by geography but by spirit.
That desire to literally materialise their community led participants to seek out ways of being specific to the place and their experience of it. The exact nature of the fabric, of texture, gained importance: the blue nylon of the overalls of the girls who worked at the chemists; the old-fashioned sprig of a mother’s wrap-around apron; the heavy tweed of an old woman’s coat as she balanced a tray of fish and chips in the community café; the shiny gleam of a boxer’s shorts, all sourced with careful attention to authenticity. Participants were determined to capture the precise detail of what they saw around them: the fish in the fishmonger’s window had to have embroidered green parsley strewn across it; the wheels of a new pram had to sport bright silver wheels; a chimney needed smoke; a balloon a tiny gleam of light; the small sensory thrills people noticed in their everyday lives had to be present.
When all the separate parts were finished participants were invited to come and lay their picture wherever they wanted on the blue backcloth donated by the local fabric shop. An eclectic collage of personal and local stories began to emerge on the cloth, images jostling together in neither chronological nor creative order. The logos of local groups, the facades of buildings, were punctuated with the intimacy of personal imagery, of local jokes and characters, animating the wall hanging with wry humour and human poignancy, with insight and care. Nothing that anyone had sewn was discarded, none of their stitching unpicked to make it neater. The finished work was an unedited, sometimes raw, expression of the people of Leith. And with that came a vibrancy that no artist could ever replicate. The middle section of the hanging spelled out L.E.I.T.H. in three-feet high lettering, the ‘L’ made by Leith’s oldest residents in a sepia image from their childhood, and the ‘H’ by its youngest in a riotous assembly of their ideas for the future garnished in iridescent plastics and sequins. I gathered up the three separate panels of the wall hanging, weighted now by its sewn stories and, with my sewing machine, pushed on through image after image to piece together a local sense of identity.
The Prosecco finished, Anne put on the soundtrack made for the Pictures of Leith’s launch. We sat together on the sofa as once-familiar voices told us its story. It began with a group of youngsters chanting a well-
known rhyme:
Everywhere we go-oo, everywhere we go-oo
People always ask us, people always ask us
Where do you come fae? Where do you come fae?
We come fae Leith. We come fae Leith.
If you cannae hear us. We’ll shout a wee bit louder.
Mike, the bin man, next takes up the narration, his voice a touch plummier than usual: ‘Like everywhere else Leith is changing. It is a close community, proud of its past, and the memories of its people are important to its history. It’s not just a question of being nostalgic. Memories of a livelier past give the people of Leith the optimism to fight for a better future.’
The voices of participants fill the room, talking proudly of their area and what they had sewed in the project. The soundtrack ends in a rap, composed and spoken by Leith’s young unemployed, telling of a Leith that offers them little hope. Their words are interspersed with the cut-glass tones of the prime minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, voicing in repetitive phrasing her uncompromising stand: ‘If a man will not work, he will not eat . . . If a man will not work, he cannot eat. Create the necessary wealth . . . create the necessary wealth’.
The wall hanging was unveiled in the local community centre on an evening that felt like a family party, with contributors, relatives and neighbours crowding around it to point out what they had sewn and to discover what others had made. It stayed on display in the community centre for a while before being relocated to the local library, where it remained for the next thirty years.
Anne and I moved on to coffee. I asked her if she thought there was any specific advantage to Pictures of Leith being a sewing project, or would the enthusiasm, the level of involvement, the impact have been the same for a project in another art form, such as a community drama, a photographic exhibition or a street mural? Anne deliberated before she replied. She said that for vulnerable people, the elderly, those on medication, people dealing with a high level of stress in their daily lives, sewing on Pictures of Leith was perhaps more accessible than other kinds of arts projects. It didn’t demand a high level of energy. It was sedentary, quiet and manageable for most. People didn’t need to talk about themselves; their sewing was the main topic of conversation. They could retain their privacy and still be involved in a public project. Being shy, slow, hesitant in English weren’t barriers to inclusion. Not only that, but in a sewing project, elderly women and women from different ethnic backgrounds, women who knew how to sew, were vital assets. Their knowledge of needlework was seized upon gratefully by others who lacked the skill and needed help. These women discovered a community value that boosted their social confidence and connected them, some for first time, to a community they thought had no time for them. There was also something unique in sewing together, about disparate members of the community sitting around the same table, sharing scissors, pooling resources, witnessing each others’ efforts. It created a physical proximity that generated good-will and camaraderie in an atmosphere of mutual support, of affection even.
For many of these people, who lived in bleak surroundings, the sensuality of handling colour and varying textures of cloth was soothing. It was pleasurable to smooth out the creases in silk, to untangle a rainbow of embroidery threads, to dip into the rag bag of remnants and search out the exact fabric to use for the bricks of a building or the sails of a ship.
Anne reminded me that, as the number of participants grew, we had to abandon the cramped centre in Buchanan Street and move into the community centre café in the local shopping mall. There the project took on another dimension. People with unstable lives who couldn’t have committed themselves to regular sessions could now join in more easily, for a little while. Young mothers with babies in pushchairs, workers on night-shift, children after school curious as to what the hive of activity was in the corner of the café, stayed for an hour or two to contribute. Sometimes they just picked up pins, told their own story, or volunteered to take something away to finish at home, but they all helped in some way. The workshops in the community café gave the project public visibility, and sewers were buoyed up by local interest and admiration. Their loyalty to, and pride in, the project grew exponentially. Even then, Anne didn’t underestimate how difficult it was for some to become involved. To step out of their comfort zone, to cross the threshold of their houses and present themselves to a group of strangers was challenging. But many did. They bridged the gap between isolation and involvement because, Anne thinks, the sight of such a mixture of people, of different ages, genders, backgrounds and cultures, sewing companionably was reassuring. It signalled an open door.
When residents in disadvantaged areas have few chances to say who they are, the opportunity to create a self-portrait, to convey what is common among them, is very seductive. Scrutinised as subjects of consultancies and government policies, their problems audited, their deprivation inventoried, what they can offer individually and collectively is often overlooked. A community arts project such as Pictures of Leith can provide a medium through which local people can display imagination, skill and knowledge. For the residents of Leith the project was, at a time of change, a vital affirmation of neighbourhood identity and cohesion.
There have been significant changes in Leith over the past thirty years. The derelict docklands have been transformed into a modern riverscape of smart apartments and expensive restaurants to service a new professional populace and the employees of the Scottish government, whose headquarters stretches in glistening steel and glass along the waterfront. Leith’s main street, Leith Walk, seems the same, even though the Asian fabric shops of my memory have changed ownership and are now Polish-run enterprises offering dress alteration services, and the greasy cafes have become trendy eateries serving Portuguese custard tarts. But gentrification is polarising the community and creating a widening chasm between rich and poor, and the community is becoming imbalanced. Property developers are buying up shop units and tracts of land to build student accommodation. What were once family homes are being snapped up to turn into Airbnb lets. In some blocks, a solitary pensioner is the only permanent resident; all the others are just passing through. With an increasingly transient population, it is more and more difficult to anchor emotional investment. In the new flats at Ocean Terminal, each floor has a locked door to keep residents safe; but this also discourages neighbourly interaction. Anne tells me that Leith is the most densely populated community in Scotland, with 26,000 people living within 200 yards of each other, but now a Michelin-starred restaurant shares the same stairwell as a family supported by the local food bank. Undoubtedly regeneration has brought benefits. The streets are cleaner, the housing stock upgraded, the area better cared for and more prosperous, but the young people who were born here can’t afford to stay and its elderly don’t want to leave. Generations are being separated and the continuum of community life and memory is being disrupted. With community facilities closing, replaced by more up-market cultural venues, there are fewer places for a mixture of residents to be together. The community is being culturally displaced from its own neighbourhood. Locals have little part to play in Leith’s regeneration. And, Anne says, if the main players, those who make Leith special – its campaigners, the remnants of its working class, the immigrants who brought its unique character – disappear, then Leith’s unique identity will be lost forever.
That identity is preserved, however, on the Pictures of Leith wall hanging. And other communities have realised their own stories, characters and spirit in many local textile projects throughout Britain and those I have been involved with – not least in a project I devised for Glasgow’s Year as European City of Culture in 1990, called Keeping Glasgow in Stitches, for which 600 people made twelve fifteen-feet long banners that captured the history, personality, politics and popular culture of their city. It was made in collaboration with Glasgow Museums and, unlike Pictures of Leith, its ownership fell to the city authorities rather than its community. After its launch and three years of touring –
when it was exhibited elsewhere in Scotland, in Milan, Rostov-on-Don in Russia and Cyprus – it was folded away and, despite requests that it be put back on public view, it has only been seen once in the last 25 years. It was relegated to being an historical object, with the museum as the guardian of its heritage. But its real heritage is the group of women who met during its making, who continued to contribute to community textile projects in the city as the Glasgow Banner Group, and who still meet every month. For them, their part in the creation of Keeping Glasgow in Stitches was their heirloom to their city, the giving of their time and talent, to ensure a lasting document was made that encapsulated the place they belonged to. And they lament its loss as an alternative public landmark of community life.