In June 2021 the Trust awarded a grant of £2,000 to the Quaker Arts Network to help support their Loving Earth Project’s community textile project and to produce additional materials to help people engage with the climate crisis through the project.
THE LOVING EARTH PROJECT celebrates some of the wonderful things threatened by growing environmental breakdown: people, places, creatures, and other things we love. It is helping people to engage creatively and constructively with these issues, without being overwhelmed. It’s also a way to share positive examples of change and why people have taken action for the sake of love.
Using simple questions and activities, focusing on something, someone, or somewhere we love, and how our actions are connected to the environmental changes that will affect it, the project invites people to explore how they might each help reduce the threats to the world we love and to commit to an action.
People are invited to make a textile panel illustrating their response. Making textile art creates space for creative reflection and opens opportunities for discussion. They have created a variety of online resources (videos, printable documents) including guided meditations and examples of textile techniques to help people with this, these are available at http://lovingearth-project.uk/resources/. The project has been used by school groups, craft groups, faith groups, environmental groups, and others, as well as individuals. While the project cannot monitor what further actions have been taken, it is clear that many participants have enjoyed the activity, taken time to learn about issues, and been pleased to discover positive actions they could take.
Over 400 textile panels, and accompanying texts, have now been created, and most can be seen online at http://lovingearth-project.uk/test-gallery/ . Groups of panels were taken to show in venues around Glasgow in autumns 2021, where they were recognised as among the best arts events in Scotland for COP 26. Since then, panels have been touring many parts of the UK and beyond, exhibited in venues such as local museums and galleries, Quaker meeting houses, churches and a cathedral, town halls and libraries. Workshops, speaker events and other events have also taken place, both at these venues and online. These exhibitions and events have proved to be of wide interest and have stimulated conversations, inspired further actions and been much enjoyed.
The project has also published two small books illustrating many of the panels and using some of the makers’ texts alongside further information about the issues they have illustrated. The aim is to provide more information about the issues, and also examples of how people may engage with them – whether at practical physical actions or at more spiritual levels. These books can be purchased from http://lovingearth-project.uk/shop/ , from exhibitions and in other selected outlets.
Further exhibitions will continue through 2023, with details posted at http://lovingearth-project.uk/events-2/. Everyone is welcome to join the project and they welcome further panels for their online gallery. Further news of the project will be on the website http://lovingearth-project.uk and you are welcome to subscribe to their occasional newsletter.