‘Memory makes us who we are.
The narratives we create will depend upon how we piece together fragments of the past. The objects we save act as keys to different stories: often, many of the things we hold onto are made of cloth. Our bodies are always in contact with cloth, it has sensory suggestive powers, which can stir both conscious and unconscious memory.’
Julia Curtis

We all have a story of cloth to tell. What memory does cloth hold for you?

Thus reads the opening line of a new website called www.storiesofcloth.com; a culturally diverse arts and heritage project reflecting on the personal memories associated with the ritual events of birth, marriage and death, through the sensory medium of cloth. ‘StoriesofCloth’ hopes to create a rare opportunity for exchange between cultures and generations, increasing understanding of one another's lost and changing heritage.

Commissioned in 2006 by Trafford Borough Council and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund the original project saw artists Lesley Sutton and Paula Keenan working alongside community groups from six different cultures observing and documenting individual and collective stories shared by small groups of women from the different cultural backgrounds who through varying circumstances have all found themselves living in and around the Borough of Trafford in South Manchester. Despite their varied backgrounds all the women hold things in common; the celebration of life from birth to grave and the use of textiles during these celebrations.

During the workshop sessions the women were asked to bring along items of cloth associated with a rite of passage and to share their memories and stories relating to them. The results were amazing as the women shared very personal stories about the Jewish holocaust, female circumcision, experiences of war and immigration, showing us the pieces of cloth they had kept as either heirlooms or signifiers of their memories. Others described pieces of cloth to us and memories of happy times sewing them because they had been forced to flee their homes in haste and had left many of their personal belongings behind them.  

The initial project worked with around forty women but now continues with the launch of this website, with the belief that inherent in human nature is the desire to compare, learn & share experience; we want to know how others live, what they believe and how they view and understand us. This transformation can begin through the mutual exchange of our stories; in this case stories of cloth and its intimate, tactile relationship with our bodies, crossing both time and cultural boundaries, weighted with social and personal histories; ‘storiesofcloth’ has, and hopes to continue, inviting many varied responses.