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Community Quilt Project

Quilt Just Image

Memo Community Quilt Project

Stitching our community together.

In these difficult times of social distancing, working from home and, for some of us, self-isolating, we would love for you to be part of our community project that brings people together through making.

Led by local artist Jodi Ann Nicholson, you can expect to receive video tutorials, including guidance and creative ideas to help you make your own unique and individual part of our Memo community quilt celebrating the Barry area.

Our community quilt project is open to all, we would love for you to create a square patch and tell us about what inspired your quilted artwork. Once you have been registered onto the project we will send you a full technical guidance pack. Please don’t start your creation until you receive this or watch Jodi’s video.

Each unique square will be sewn together to make a giant community quilt, that will be displayed at the Memo for when we can re-open for all to see it. Before then we will create a VIRTUAL quilt on our website and social media pages.

This is an intergenerational project for people of all ages and backgrounds; for beginners and experts, so whether it’s just you, your family or friends, spread the news and register today.

If you have a neighbour, friend or relative who doesn’t use the internet but would like to take part, they can phone 01446 738622 to register with an address and we will post instructions to them.

Dates:

  • Book your patch on the quilt by completing our form before 24th January 2021 – extended to Monday 1 February!
  • Receive your technical Patch Making Pack by 25th January 2021
  • Submit your patch by 21st February 2021
  • Completed quilt patches will be virtually shared as they arrive, and the final quilt on St David’s Day.

When you send in your square patch, please include:

  • your name
  • contact details
  • a little bit about why you’ve taken part, a story behind the patch you create, your inspiration, and your relationship with the Barry area
  • your Instagram handle if you have one

We would love to follow your making process too so tag us @BarryMemo on social media and use the hashtag #BarryMemoQuilt so we can see and share your progress posts.

Register your interest here

Meet the Artist: Jodi Ann Nicholson

A headshot of Jodi. She is a young mixed race woman with a bright smile. She wears her curly dark hair in two buns, has some lovely hooped dangly earrings and is wearing a black top.
Jodi Ann Nicholson

Jodi is a dance artist, based in South Wales. She trained at TrinityLaban Conservatoire of Music and Dance as a contemporary dancer and went on to study an MA in Fine Arts at Cardiff School of Art and Design.

Jodi’s creative interests lie between a movement and object based practice, exploring the relationship between the two disciplines. Her object based practice tends to play with textiles and embroidery techniques to create sculptural installation based work.

Jodi’s personal thread of interrogation in her creative practice is with notions of identity; how we construct our ideas of self and connect with our cultural identity. This comes from her early childhood experiences of: foster care, being adopted and beginning her journey of piecing together and learning about her mixed race heritage as a young adult in the UK.

Jodi has a wider interest in communities and communal identities; wanting to bring people together to celebrate and explore their local community and who they are within it. Quilt making is an ideal practice to explore this as quilting has ties with fold traditions across the world. It is an activity which holds a strong sense of community, a chance to tell stories and express identity within the stitching and patterns of the quilts. Jodi is excited to see the quilt that will be created through collaborating with the people in Barry.

Jodi’s Work

With artist statements about each piece.

Benjamin #2

A large scale art work hangs in a warehouse space. It uses earthy tones and swirling lines.
Benjamin#2 at Cardiff School of Art and Design
Art work is suspended from a warehouse ceiling of corrugated metal. On the floor a large swirl of thick rope stretches up to the ceiling.
Benjamin#2 at SHIFT Cardiff

Benjamin #2 uses fabrics to tell the narrative of an adoptee, addressing the formation of identity. Drawing on my personal struggles in defining myself, Benjamin #2 communicates the precarious balance between our external safety net (perhaps: family, friends, community) while the internal mess and struggle of piecing together our identity continues after an experience of displacement.

Moving with Benjamin

Jodi squats on a concrete floor below her artwork Benjamin which is suspended on the ceiling below fluorescent tube lighting. The image is dominated by the white brick walls and stark flooring. Jodi looks small as she is at a distance.
Still from Moving with Benjamin at SHIFT Cardiff
Jodi is on her back with arms outstretched, knees bent and feet on the floor. She is below her artwork Benjamin which is suspended on the ceiling below fluorescent tube lighting. The image is dominated by the white brick walls and stark flooring. Jodi looks small as she is at a distance.
Still from Moving with Benjamin at SHIFT Cardiff

A durational improvisation exploring the relationship between dance and object with textile installation Benjamin #2. It has been performed at: Barry Memo as part of Ransack’s ‘Arrive Platform’ 2017, Cardiff Fringe Festival 2017 and SHIFT, Cardiff 2018

The Stay at Home Dance: 27 dancers, 1 dancer // Y Ddawns Aros Adre: 27 dawnswyr, 1 dawns

A collage of small square photographs of people dancing in their homes or garden.
The Stay at Home Dance

This piece was created throughout the lockdown of March 2020. I was inspired by Mitchell Rose’s Exquisite Corps and in my hope to stay connected to my fellow dancers I sent out the invite to create our very own, naming it: ‘The Stay at Home Dance: 27 dancers, 1 dance //Y Ddawns Aros Adre: 27 dawnswyr, 1 dawns’. 

Making this piece helped lockdown be a time for us to be inspired by our homes and local outdoor spaces, exploring the possibilities within the limitations ‘staying at home’ gave us; rooms that were once just bedrooms, kitchens, living rooms, stairways and gardens became our dancing spaces.

This work is a celebration of the creativity and resilience from just a handful of the dancers in Wales.

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