Name: Subversive stitching: Textiles and banner-making in Women’s activism
Start: 2025-01-16T13:00:00+00:00
End: 2025-01-16T14:00:00+00:00
Location: 2/3 Castle Street, CB3 0AQ Cambridge, United Kingdom

$Subversive stitching: Textiles and banner-making in Women\u2019s activism$

Carey Bennet and Cathy Dunbar will share about the making of banners by Cambridge women within the context of a UK wide project in 2018 to commemorate women’s suffrage. This project celebrated the use of banners by the suffragists and suffragettes of the 1900s, who marched to demand the vote for women. Over history, women have used their province of sewing and weaving to assert themselves in the face of inequality and misogyny. The talk will reference banner-making’s significance in campaigns within Trades Unions, the Peace Movement, wider feminist campaigns and climate activism. The textile banner has become widely used in recent campaigns, having the power to bring women together around commitment to a common cause.
About the Speakers
Carey Bennet lives and works locally as an art therapist in Cambridge, having had previous careers as an art teacher, researcher, education officer and children’ services manager. Carey employs fabrics and threads as a medium for her own imagery, and is interested in the historical use of textiles in women’s activism.
Cathy Dunbar is a feminist artist and activist, mainly working collaboratively with other artists within the community. She is a founding member of Sew Angry, Mrs Fubbs, The Society of Xtras and The Freudian Slips. She has worked within the industry as a weaver, a machinist, a seamstress and a dressmaker at different times of her life. She uses used textiles as an art medium alongside other materials and is interested in textiles and threads as a medium and metaphor for the human condition.