Represent

Represent project/Where’s my vote installation (2019) — Saheli Hub, People’s heritage cooperative, Birmingham. West midlands.

Represent was a community heritage project exploring the impact of WW1 and gaining the vote on the lives of Birmingham’s people. My project with the women at Saheli Hub (Handsworth Wellbeing Centre) focused on women’s historic role as active citizens of the 1918 election campaign.

Research at the Birmingham Archives involved looking at the election propaganda posters circa 1918. The West Midlands is unusual in that it offered three—ultimately unsuccessful—local campaigns ran by women, the first time in the nation’s history. The material in the archives was visually simple yet provided a rich source of inspiration.

Printmaking offered a creative process, in which participants could experiment and explore communication in a more abstract way. In developing through mark, texture and typography, they evolved and expressed ideas through symbolism, gesture and composition.

The inspiration initially derived from the iconic ‘Votes For Women’ election poster. Working within a selection of typography styles and colour palettes indicative of the period, kept us connected to the research material investigated at the start of the residency. However, individuals’ artwork reflected the issues significant to them, in the present day. Building statements (expressing through different typographical styles and sizes) emphasising the words they felt were most important.

Taking advantage of figurative symbols, of women’s domesticity, the posters were reproduced onto pillowcases and hung like laundry in the Handsworth Park on election day. Their artwork captured community residents walking through the park, giving a public face to their endeavours and marking one hundred years of change: a narrative of rewriting women’s role and a celebration of women’s skills, knowledge and influence, now reaching far beyond the domestic environment.