Refuge
Rae x Idle Women
Rae is thrilled to be working with the mighty Idle Women on a new project as part of their ongoing work with women who are living in or have moved on from refuge. Weaving together a sustainable textiles project with a workshop development programme, women can build their textiles practice, progressing their knowledge of the things they enjoy making, into a series of their own workshops.
Idle Women is an arts, environment and social justice collaboration, founded by artists in 2015 and based in Lancashire. They create artworks which are spaces: a boat, a garden, a rave, a website. The artworks they make are sculptural, site-specific and contextual, created through social justice collaborations and built to last, to be animated and inhabited by women. Idle Women’s projects reach for something beyond the horizon, creating transformative spaces for women that can't be cut, closed or taken away.
Feeding into the sustainable model and spaces already established by Idle Women, the project will adopt a studio based collaborative practice approach: we will share skills and techniques, learning and reflection, ideas and inspiration, and different ways of doing things. We will use and take care of what we have, be inspired by the places, objects and materials that are meaningful to us, and use line, texture and colour to explore, experiment, and make beautiful, useful things.
This is a formative first project for Rae, an opportunity to deepen relationships with women and fellow artists united by the same concerns, sharing skills, care and knowledge in spaces made by and for women.
“Idle Women is a collaboration with women from any and all walks of life. We work to our strengths because we know that transformation is a daily process, there are always other ways and beauty is complicated.”Idle Women
Images: (top) NB Selina Cooper, (left) the Idle Women allotment in summer, (right) the Physic Garden in autumn.
Photo credit: Katy Sadler
Make
Working with Birmingham & Solihull Women’s Aid, Make offered new creative and social experiences for women living in refuge, aged 16 and up.
Exploring different art and craft forms, women worked with new and familiar materials, tools and techniques, exploring textiles, ceramics, journaling, collage, painting and drawing. They made artworks and practical items for themselves, for their living spaces, and for other people.
Sessions at BSWAs specialist young women’s refuge offered time and space to try new creative activities together or alone. Developing their artistic skills and ideas, the young women made their own decisions, explored what mattered to them, and what made them feel good.
Make artists: Carolyn Morton, Modern Clay & Sarah Taylor Silverwood.
“The art journaling session was therapeutic. It allowed me to get things out and not be stuck in my own head.”“It’s been peaceful to do the tile. It’s been an escapism from all my worries and troubles. This is the first time I’ve done this and it has been a nice thing to do. It makes me forget my problems and focus on other fun things to do.”
“We worked as a group and it gave us a chance to get to know each other and what makes us tick.”
Feedback from young women supported by Birmingham & Solihull Women’s Aid
Make was generously supported by Arts Council England’s National Lottery Project Grants. It was produced by Katy Sadler with Feminists Work For Change.
