This week at Pulling Together we began to design and embroider the panels for our tapestry Our Family Tree.

This week at Pulling Together we began to draw up what images to include in the “Our Family Tree” banner. The young women thought it was important to include where families migrated from. From the conversations that have been held with parents and grandparents the women hope to document some of the stories as postcards sent back home to their loved ones, telling the experiences faced by the migrants as they arrived in Britain some as many as 60 years ago.

This week at Pulling Together we continued with our project “Our Family Tree”. The young women have been talking about the experiences that their parents and grandparents talked about. They likened the isolation that these first migrants felt to the past year and how during lockdown we have been unable to meet up with family and friends. Using their stories we hope to create individual artwork that can be combined to create a larger piece of art that can be displayed at Limelight and at future Pulling Together events. Using applique and embroidery is important as often many of the grandmothers who first came to England were able to use these techniques in making traditional clothes for family members.

Some of the group talked about how the only way to contact the family back home was via letter and often with an aerogramme letter or a call booked through the operator and in an emergency a telegram.

This week at Pulling Together we began our latest project funded by Trafford Council Inclusive Neighbourhoods Grant Scheme. Our Family Tree is a project in which we hope that members can explore the the experiences of parents and grandparents as they made the journey from their homelands to the UK to make a new life for themselves and their families. This week we looked at how to ask family members who made this journey some as early as the 1960’s and some more recently. We would like to find out what experiences they has and how they overcame barriers such as language, racism, loneliness and isolation at the time of their arrival.

Some of the questions we decided on were:

Where were you born?

How did you get to England?

Where did you get married?

How old were you when you had your first child?

What is your favourite food?

What was your dream or ambition?

What language do you speak?

Do you have any brothers and sisters? Where are they?

Did you know anyone else in England?

What did you think it would be like living here?

Were you lonely?

How did you stay in touch with your family back home?

Did you think you would live here forever?

Do you have any photos of when you first came here or from before you came?

Using the questions and answers we hope to make a presentation and a fabric collage/banner that expresses the feelings that each person had.