I was commissioned by Castle House Museum in Dunoon to lead the co-production of a textile wall hanging with the local community, celebrating the 200th anniversary of Castle House. Dunoon is a resort town on the Cowal Peninsula which has an interesting local history, as well as beautiful natural landscapes and a strong sense of community. For this commission, I wanted to highlight the amazing archive of Castle House Museum, using creative translation of information to make it more accessible to the community.
Through a process of collage, printing on textile and embroidery we created a map of Dunoon highlighting local landmarks and memories all chosen by participants. For this process, the collage workshop was aimed at family groups, involving children aged 3-13 years and their adult carers. During the workshop participants filled in an outline map of Dunoon with photocopied newspaper articles, photographs and documents from the Castle House Museum archive to illustrate the town's history. By working with family groups the collage session facilitated intergenerational discussion of the town, with adults describing to the children what an area used to be like and how it has changed. Then following the printing of the collaged map onto textile panels, I ran two embroidery workshops with adults to embellish the printed textile and add more elements to depict additional local memories.
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Highlights of the textile map include: the Highland Mary statue embroidered with flowers, midgies embroidered around the Cowel Games stadium, and an applique seagull flying over the town (probably ready to steal your chips!)
Find out more about the project and the making process in this short video!
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Thank you to all the participants of the project and Castle House Museum staff. Thanks also to the Hugh Fraser Foundation for funding the project. The banner has all the names of those involved printed on the back, as a record of this wonderful project. The banner is on permanent display at Castle House Museum in Dunoon.
