Where’s Your Vote? (2019)—Installation at Handsworth Park, Birmingham. twenty-nine Individual textiles [500 x 800 mm]; digital print onto fabric.
As the nation prepared to go to the polls in December 2019, a collaboration with women at Saheli Hub (Handsworth Wellbeing Centre in Birmingham) resulted in an installation in Handsworth Park, the day proceeding the General Election. Handsworth Park has a particular significance, playing a small part in the history of equal rights campaigning—the Boathouse being a victim of ‘Suffragette outrage’ in 1913.
Exploring the impact of WW1 and gaining the vote on the lives of Birmingham people; the artworks evolved into a series of election posters. Relating to original voting campaign literature from 1918 located in the collections at Birmingham Archives, the women at Saheli Hub connect to the heritage material by way of typography and colour palettes indicative of the period, but they created posters reflecting current issues close to their hearts.
With research focused on women’s historic role as active citizens and, taking advantage of historically figurative symbols of women’s domesticity, the posters were reproduced onto pillowcases and hung like laundry in the park. A narrative rewriting women’s role at that time; a celebration of female skills, knowledge and influence reaching far beyond the domestic environment—and marking one hundred years of change.
Where’s Your Vote? was developed by People’s Heritage Cooperative with the following partners
The Art of Taking Part 