Sharing stories through textiles about home and belonging.
Patterns of Migration is a project led by Dr Mary Ikoniadou which shares stories through clothing and textiles, exploring themes of identity, home, and belonging. The Patterns of Migration website features a collection of objects from across the world alongside the memories and lived experiences of their owners.
For this month’s FACILITATE session, Mary shared the participatory community approach adopted to build the collection. It uses textiles as activators: they become the storytelling devices, allowing participants to recount memories, people, places and particular craftmanship passed down the generations.
Workshop attendees were asked to bring their own objects and share their stories about them. These included a baby blanket, an army belt, and an old shirt. And it really did work – it was easy and natural to talk about the objects and listen to others’ stories.
About Patterns of Migration:
Patterns of Migration (www.patternsofmigration.com) explores themes of home and belonging through clothing and textile objects. Personal items alongside those held in dress and textile collections are the catalyst for telling stories of movement and migration, entangled with stories of textile heritage, both local and global, as well as social, and cultural memory, history and identity. The project began in East Lancashire, UK, an area identified as having high deprivation and low cultural capital where the history of migration is closely linked to textile production.
Our inclusive and participatory methodology is focused on creating both physical and digital spaces. Our aim is to open up conversations of individual and collective knowledge and experience which is explored through the connection of textiles to the comings and goings of our everyday lives, their functional use and symbolic associations, their sensory and tactile qualities.