PROCESSIONS Banners made in Scotland

Artist: Chris Hammacott 

Contributors: The Western Isles Women’s Group with An Lanntair

Location: Stornoway

Materials: mixed textiles, Harris tweed

This banner represents the diverse range of women who came together to create it. On a backdrop of Harris Tweed, each participant created squares representing women who have inspired them. In the centre of the banner is depicted the Goddess Brid, from whom the Hebrides take their name. She represents the strong women who live and work there.

Over the blocks climb small women figures, helping one another upwards, using the work of inspirational women to help them onwards. The text, ‘No Woman is an Island’, is written in English and the group’s native Gaelic.

Artist: Lizzie McDougall 
 
Contributors: Am Bhata The Sistership at An Talla Solais

Location: Ullapool

Materials: mixed textiles  

Am Bhata The Sistership set out to illustrate aspects of living in the Scottish Highlands for women. Inspired, nurtured and challenged by their environment (both natural and social), the group feel themselves to be on a journey that will not be over until all women have equality. This journey is driven by a will to make a better world for all children, everywhere.

The participants contributed their ideas, time, energy, materials, stories, empathy, multi-tasking skills and sistership. They also contribute massively to the life of the Highlands and beyond, and artist, Lizzie McDougall, felt very grateful and honoured to have worked with them.  

Artist: Heidi Soos

Contributors: members of Blazing Needles and all of Highland Multicultural Friends Sewing Group

Location: Inverness

Materials: mixed textiles

The group found this to be a wonderfully collaborative project, both in the design and the making. The members felt that it was important to ensure that their geographical location, as well as their diversity of race, ability and experience, were clear within the banner.

The use of a variety of sewing, knitting, crocheting and crafting mediums ensured that every member of the team could contribute their own special skills, whilst also learning each other's practice. Some elements (such as the flowers) could be worked on by individuals at home when they felt able. Accessibility of participation was the most important part of the process for the group. 

Artist: Alicia Hendrick

Contributors:  Mull and Iona woman and girls

Location: Isle of Mull

Materials:  beeswax, dye, applique, embroidery, net

Lead artist, Alicia Hendrick states: “Our banner is a celebration of the inspirational women of our islands. It takes the shape of a sail held aloft by oars and incorporates handmade fishing net made under the instruction of a former salmon fisher woman.  

At its centre, a bold map of Mull has been filled with images of inspirational women from our islands. Using local beeswax, brushes and tjanting tools we inscribed the names of island women we admired from past and present in the sea surrounding the map of our islands.

Influenced by the Suffragette banner maker, Mary Lowndes, we have incorporated the very fabric of our islands, with tweed made by Ardalanish Weavers Tweed appliquéd onto the map of Iona, and The Sound of Iona Tartan appliquéd to create a compass. 

We have embroidered lyrics, words and poetry from island women writers onto the bearings of this compass. Our sash carries as our motto the words We Know Where We're Going * in local wool to signal our intent as we travel forward together as women through the 21st Century.

Comar was the host organisation for this project. Established in 2013 through the merger of An Tobar and Mull Theatre, it strives to build on the legacy of these two well-regarded companies."     
*This slogan is taken from the title of the famous Powell and Pressburger film “I Know Where I'm Going” filmed on Mull in the 1940s.

Artist: Deborah Campbell 

Contributors: local community groups, including the Guiding Association, Women’s Institute and Peebles High School art students, with Eastgate Theatre

Location: Peebles 

Materials: mixed textiles, buttons, beads                                                           

The bicycle for the Suffragette movement became the method by which women had access to independent travel without chaperones. This gave women the freedom to come together in the liberation of women’s rights and the bicycle therefore become a symbol of the emancipation. 

Tweeddale is a haven for cycling and many women and girls are actively involved in the sport, so the bicycle was an obvious source of inspiration when creating the banner.

Participants each independently created a hand-embroidered leaf, which incorporates either their name, a word appropriate to the Suffragette movement, or to today’s continuing struggle for equal rights.                                                                

Artist: Lindy Richardson

Contributors: University of Edinburgh students, staff and women of Corntonvale Prison, with Edinburgh College of Art

Location: Edinburgh

Material: mixed textiles, net, beads

The banner brings together a series of badges as responsive slogans from the group’s discussions around suffrage and the disenfranchised. Each badge was made individually by group members, some in university, some at home and some in cells in Corntonvale Prison.

Each participant has a badge of equal size and space on the banner, every voice and statement being equal in this united artwork.  The banner celebrates influential women past, present and future who have inspired, and continue to inspire women seeking equality and change.

At PROCESSIONS on 10th June, the group also carried pennants emblazoned with the names of ‘The Edinburgh Seven’, the UK’s first female university students matriculated at Edinburgh University and admitted from 1869. They had a very difficult experience negotiating their way into education and endured terrible prejudice. They were pelted with eggs and flour when entering the examination hall, and there was even a sheep let loose in the exams to disrupt proceedings.

The Seven took their case to the House of Lords, asking that they be allowed to vote as university graduates. Their case was thrown out. 

Mixed textiles, net, beads   

Artist: Helen de Main

Contributors: Glasgow Women's Library workshop attendees: Helen, Foxy, Daniela, Beverly, Freya, Mac, Kathryn, Freya, Betty, Anita, Ruby, Karen, Ashley, Annabel, Joanne, Alison, Lisa, Sandy, Jean, Paria, Emma, Shazia, Bridie, Karen, Aleena, Alice, Rumana, Zeenat, Mhurai, Ebony, Amalia, Rachael

Location: Glasgow

Materials: screenprint on fabric

The backdrop of this screen-printed banner is made up of repeating close-up images of women’s hands. The graphic shape that surrounds the central image was inspired by the group’s research into different flag and banner shapes.

The texts were drawn from conversations around what it means to be a woman in 2018, as well as from research from material in the Glasgow Women's Library's archive and museum collection, notably the banner and badge collection. Individuals worked on texts for the smaller sections, as the group was keen to present a variety of women’s voices. The group then printed these together. 

Artist: Natalie Kerr

Contributors: Granite Guardian Gals with Look Again Festival

Location: Aberdeen

Materials: mixed textiles

This banner was inspired by a wonderful letter from the collections of Aberdeen Art Gallery and Museums. Addressed to pioneering journalist and Aberdeen Suffragette Caroline Phillips, it details arrangements for a march in 1907 similar to PROCESSIONS, bringing women* together from across Scotland to demonstrate for the vote.

*those who identify as women or non-binary    

The group states:  

‘We have explored what it means to be your own true self in society today. We hope to: take up space, support each other, find strength in defiance and power in our friendships.’   

Artist: Fiona Hermse 

Contributors: Dunbar Dementia Carers Support Group: Lorna, Dorothy, Ricky, Ray, Carol, Anou, Izzy, Alison, Iris, Anne P, Anne S, Louise, Nora, Beth, Rita. With Luminate

Location: Edinburgh

Materials: cotton, digitally printed satin, dyes, silk paints, fishing net, lace

The banner focuses on the fish wives and herring girls, an important aspect of Dunbar’s heritage. These incredibly hard-working women led extraordinary lives, many of them very emancipated for their time. In 1913, a group of Newhaven fish wives travelled 400 miles to join a deputation of working women led by Suffragette, Flora Drummond, at the House of Commons. 

The banner incorporates the first part of a quote by Frances Wright, 19th century Scottish abolitionist and feminist: 'Equality is the soul of liberty; there is, in fact, no liberty without it.'

The banner was created using spray dye, silk painting, mono printing, embroidery and pompom techniques. 

Artist: Nadine Gorency

Contributor: Macrobert PROCESSIONS group

Location: Stirling

Materials: mixed textiles

This banner was inspired by and is dedicated to Ethel Moorhead, one of the lesser known but most militant and pro-active Suffragettes of her era. Ethel was found with bloody hands and arrested after she smashed a glass case at the Wallace Monument in Stirling. The group was keen to create a banner that paid homage to her strength, determination and commitment to militancy.

The group used upcycling methods, with one of the participants donating her silk wedding dress to create Ethel’s dress. It transpired that the PROCESSIONS march on 10th June was the same date as the participant’s wedding anniversary.    

Artist: Nadine Gorency 

Contributor: Macrobert PROCESSIONS group 

Location: Stirling

Materials: mixed textiles

The banner was inspired by the landscape, the vibrant history of the Macrobert area and the exquisite and intricate textile craft used in Suffragettes’ banners.

Stirling is known to be the gateway from the Lowlands to the Highlands, and purple heather covered Campsie Fells, along with lush, green rolling hills, fitted perfectly with the Suffragettes' iconic colour scheme.

A string of Suffragettes is also seen marching on these hills towards the Wallace Monument, evocative of Ethel Moorhead’s defiant actions. Applying upcycling methods, fabric off-cuts were used to emulate beautiful landscapes and fused plastic bags became the meandering River Forth.

Artist: Ana Ines Jabares-Pita 

Contributors: Ms, Miss, Mrs with National Theatre of Scotland

Location: Glasgow

Materials: felt, cotton

This banner represents laundry! Doing the washing! Traditional women’s work!

It is made up of a variety of clothing – women’s, men’s and children’s, representing the whole household.

The group was inspired by the film, ‘Suffragette’, which they watched together. They laughed, cried and shouted at the screen together, and learned that women passed messages to each other through the laundry service to arrange meetings, rallies, share news and recruit.

The group wants equality in 2018. Equal rights for all women, equal pay, equal recognition and representation. It has been 100 years and the message of the banner is that women are still doing more than our share of the washing! 

Artist: Alexandria Patience

Contributors: North Coast women

Location: Portskerra

Materials: mixed textiles, fabric paint, diamante, copper wire, shells, glass beads, PVA glue

Artist Alexandria Patience structured this banner to represent the most northerly area of the mainland of Scotland. She reached out to rural and remote locations to ensure as many women in the North as possible would feel a part of this celebration of women’s Suffrage, by sharing in the making of a single banner.  

Each one of the 15 letters, ‘North Coast Women’, was made by an individual, family or group to represent themselves and their communities spanning the North Coast. They represent Caithness and Sutherland. 

See the map on the banner to locate the makers’ locations, and the group’s home. 

Artists: Pester and Rossi

Contributors: Perth Theatre volunteers

Location: Perth

Materials: mixed textiles

This banner was inspired by an original suffrage banner created by Perth Suffrage Society, which included the 'double headed eagle' image from the Perth City crest.

The wings of the bird have become a collage of fabric hands creating the background, with two women sitting at the top, and a large brain in the middle representing strong female minds. 

The banner uses the traditional Suffragette colours: green, representing hope and the emblem of spring, white for purity in private and public life, and violet representing the instinct of freedom and dignity. The group collated words and phrases that united the hopes and concerns they share as women and girls today. 

Artist: Sandi Kiehlmann

Contributors: the group who made the banner together with support staff all attend Project Ability’s studio for people with mental ill health and learning disabilities.

Location: Glasgow

Materials: mixed textiles

Project Ability has a strong visual identity and the group decided to employ this as the main design feature. The visual is a graphic representation of the singer, Madonna. Project Ability represents community and creativity, friendship and wellbeing. These themes were at the forefront of the design. 

The group decided to use felt as it is easy to manipulate and would provide solid colour. 

The women taking part represent a broad community of interests; they wanted to demonstrate unity and advocacy for creative expression.  

Artist: Christina Inkster

Contributors: the women of Shetland with Shetland Arts Development Agency 

Location: Shetland

Materials: mixed textiles and appliqué

A poetic statement from the group:

We are the women of Shetland. This is our banner.
Our banner is our community; our community of women; each our own, together we stand, loud and proud, hand in hand.
Hear us roar, from the shore,
prejudice? A total bore!
We are here, furthermore,
Equity, we adore!
Let us join in great galore,
May valour be forevermore. 

Artist: Deirdre Nelson, assisted by Kirsty O’Connor 

Contributors: Taigh Chearsabhagh Trust
Location: North Uist

Materials: Cotton, Harris tweed, silk 

The banner, ‘Spiorad Boireannaich Uibhist An-dè, An-diugh ’s A-màireach’ ('Spirit of Uist Women Past, Present and Future') celebrates the strong spirit of the women of Uist, rooted in Gaelic culture and the beautiful islands themselves. Inspired by the Suffragette’s handkerchief from Holloway prison, signatures of ordinary yet extraordinary Uist women were gathered and embroidered onto the banner.

Names will be added, including notable women of the past, to attached streamers as an ongoing process. Hand stitching together connected participants with their forebears and forged new friendships in the present. The group’s hope is that young women will continue to be inspired in creating the Uist community of the future.

Artist: Mandy McIntosh and The Feegie Needlers

Contributors: The Feegie Needlers and SWIFT (Strong Women In Ferguslie Together), a closed group for younger women in Ferguslie, many with very young children. With The Tannahill Centre

Location: Paisley

Materials: mixed textiles

The Feegie Wummin banner pictures women meeting at The Tannahill  Centre in the act of discussing the history of women's suffrage including issues of class. The work was made during weeks of dialogue and stitching using painting quilting embroidery and appliqué  on canvas.

Artist Mandy Macintosh said: 

‘The banner survived a house fire, phoenix like, and was partly remade after the procession. [The group were] among some of the strongest and most resourceful women I have ever encountered; consider the consciousness raised and it’s only going to go higher. "Here comes Josie, here comes Claire, we've cast oor vote fur 90 years.”’

Artist: Paria Goodarzi and Helen de Main

Contributors: women from the refugee community in Glasgow. With Scottish Refugee Council

Location: Glasgow

Materials: mixed textiles

This banner was designed and embroidered by women from the refugee community in Glasgow, along with artists, Paria Goodarzi and Helen de Main. The banner features fabric from the women’s home countries, including Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kurdistan, Pakistan and Iran. Most women with refugee status in the UK are still excluded from voting in Westminster elections.