The Banyan Tree Project for craft wellbeing

Resident maker Dorothy Reglar is a familiar face at New Brewery Arts, having had a studio here for over 30 years. A garment designer whose previous career took her from Bellville Sassoon to designing for royalty and celebrities, Dorothy regularly visits the Far East, working with silk producers, weavers and natural dyers to source her beautiful fabrics but, this year the trip was done for a different reason.

Dorothy visited at the request of Eleanor Viegas, a university friend who had previously lived in Birmingham with her Goan husband, Nuno. Following his sudden death some 23 years ago, Eleanor inherited some land in southern Goa where she decided to build herself a house and has subsequently lived since 2001. From an early age, Eleanor was keenly interested in embroidery, through a teenage enjoyment of clothing design, a Masters in Textiles, and a career as an art teacher. Eleanor' asked Dorothy for her textile experience to assist in planning how the embroideries of the Banyan Tree embroidery project could join to form a coherent finished piece.

Named the Banyan Tree project because of its ability to grow like India’s national tree, a mark of strength and eternal life, the project was initially aimed at creating a panel 4m x 2m. Each woman was asked to embroider a piece of fabric 15cm x 10cm, but its popularity means the finished piece will now be much larger, with more than 300 separate pieces sewn by over 200 women.

Hand embroidery is a skill which traditionally was handed down from generation to generation, and was often to be found on table linen, altar cloths and bed linen. The arrival of the sewing machine heralded the slow decline of hand embroidery, but this project aims to keep those skills alive. The Banyan Tree project aims to connect women from Goa and beyond, of all ages and cultures and continents, through celebrating the skills, creativity and therapeutic benefits of craft.

Dorothy was keen to share the “sheer joy and almost spiritual feeling of a wonderful piece of fabric that transcends the normal”, that she herself has achieved through her work with textiles. From her previous work in the Far East, Dorothy already knows the benefits these women can realise through working together and keeping craft alive; studies in the UK show that people who have participated in textile craft say it has helped them deal with depression and anxiety, given them a sense of belonging and something to look forward to. This is echoed in the comments made by some of the women involved with the Banyan Tree project; sitting quietly embroidering with a group of friends is not only keeping these ancient Indian skills alive, but improving the mental and, ultimately, physical health of a community:

“Embroidery relaxes me and I become totally absorbed. It helps me block out the tension experienced during the day”.

“So many different colours and textures of the thread give me the inspiration and passion to work.”

“Embroidery keeps my mind happy. When the work is complete, I feel a sense of achievement.”

“Doing embroidery has not only helped me forget my problems but it has given me time, solutions and strength to face those problems.”

It is expected that the panel will be hung in the hall of the new Mopa airport in Goa, or in the modern library buildings of Goa’s capital, Panjim.

Dorothy, back from her travels, can be contacted by email.

Social distancing – it's all about our community

As the physical distancing advice continues I want to make sure we stay in touch – so here is the first of my weekly blog posts throughout the COVID-19 situation. I thought I’d start at the beginning, and just let you know what’s happening here at New Brewery Arts.

You have probably noticed that we have closed our buildings, but what does that actually mean? Few of our staff can work without our public activities so, to be safe, we sent all staff home as soon as we could. A few staff remained to pack everything away and to ‘mothball’ the buildings. I’d like to say how great the team were, and thank you to all our suppliers who helped us with advice and reassurance. Like a number of other organisations, many staff are being furloughed, and just a small, skeleton team are left working from home. Phones and emails are all on divert, so if you want to get in touch you still can.

We have hundreds of people through our doors each week and we tried to phone each and every student to let them know that their class or course had been cancelled or postponed and, as we issued refunds, we heard so many people telling us what their time with us means to them.

We also spoke to all our studio makers, to tutors, to the makers we sell in the shop and the craftspeople who were ready to be in our next exhibition. For many of our community of craftspeople there was massive uncertainty about their income. We’ve tried to help where we can, we have made sure we paid people straight away, we’ve honoured existing contracts, we’ve talked to funders about how they can help, we’ve signposted information to the self-employed when we received it. But it’s hard enough being a maker – income is sporadic at the best of times – and now as exhibitions and craft events planned for the summer have all been cancelled, there’s little certainty for craftspeople around their next significant commission or sale. We’ll be working over the coming weeks to see what more we can do to help craftspeople get through this.

And we’ve also been working to see how else New Brewery Arts can help, and at the moment we are talking to Cotswold District Council about what help we can offer to our local community and to local food businesses to see if they can use our commercial kitchen to help them deliver food locally.

That’s our first week of this ‘new normal’ - it's all been about the people who make up our community. Next week I hope we can take a moment of stillness and creativity and we’ll see where we go from here.

Take care

Beth
beth@newbreweryarts.org.uk