Art Of The Banner participants create unique Conflict Textiles

Participants of the Art of the Banner programme have unveiled new pieces of work inspired by their time working with facilitators from the Linen Hall Library and Conflict Textiles. 

The programme explored conflict textiles around the world, protest placards, as well as parade and trade union banners in Northern Ireland. 

Workshops were led by Roberta Bacic from Conflict Textiles, renowned arpillera and textile artist Deborah Stockdale, DC Tours guide Paul Donnelly and Making the Future Engagement Officer and artist Lesley Cherry.

Participants explored the messages that banners have, the skills involved in making them and how the protest banner is as relevant today as it was for our past generations before creating their own pieces. 

Deirdre Convery 

"My textile is inspired by a painting by Pauline Boty, one of the original English pop artists. I used fabric paint to make the body skin colour and sewed on pants and a sanitary towel as part of period poverty awareness."

Helen Quigley

"My Banner highlights that it’s a woman’s choice to have a termination and access to this procedure. I made it in the colours of the Suffragettes. This is a subject which I feel very strongly about and feel it should be addressed in Northern Ireland. Loved doing it. PROTEST. PROTEST. REBEL."

Jacks Baker 

I absolutely have loved this workshop. Art of The Banner opened up a whole new world. Roberta Bacic and Deborah Stockdale’s talks and guidance were fab. I am planning my next banner and have told all my friends and spoke about Conflict Textiles."

Karen Douglas 

"The Art of the Banner was a really inspiring arts experience. Lead by textiles experts who opened up a whole new world of textiles commemorating conflict and causes. I was inspired to create and impressed by everyone involved."

Rosalind Lowry

'Endangered Species List 481' 

"I included the following subjects in my banner: Endangered species of Northern Ireland including a red mark for each of the 481 species on the list; 7 pleats across the linen to mark the 7 years before the Curlew disappear; sundew and sphagnum moss which are endangered plants; drawings of the boglands and the commercial peat extraction and destruction of the bogs; a drawing of a female bog body discovered in Ireland; a print of my face as we are all bog born and return to the land; machine stitching of plants; hand embroidery in gold thread on the bog woman. The banner is in tribute to the disappearing environment of Northern Ireland."

Sarah Diver

'The Sun Banner'

"The Art of the Banner project was great to take part in and gave me an opportunity to consider and design a piece related to my cultural heritage."

Sonia Moore 

'Life Changing Decisions'

Size 61cm x 54cm 

"The Art of the Banner was an insight into how textiles were and still are used to tell stories and document history."