Extreme Hope: Chatty Craft’s Exhibition

Running at Beswick Library for two years as part of our Local Exchange Programme, Chatty Craft is a free craft group providing a chance for local people to chat, have a brew and some biscuits, and create together.  

Following City Sparks funding, Chatty Craft brought an exhibition to the Museum of Science and Industry, as part of the Manchester Science Festival. With artist Sam Edwards, the crafters translated the festival’s theme Extremes: Ourselves into an installation. 

Verity, a regular Chatty Crafter, explains the group’s take on the theme: “It’s hope. But not just any old hope – Extreme Hope, in that way that you can’t just have a little bit of hope in this world. You’ve got to have quite a bit, and as a group, to make a difference.”  

At the Museum, vibrant lanterns hang in the air, expressions and incantations of hope made by each member of the group, against a collaboratively made wall-hanging, woven from fabric rescued from previous projects, prints of their watercolour art and circles of hope.  

These concentric circles are where the project started: the inner circle an exploration of their hopes for ‘themselves’, the middle for ‘their community’ and the outer circle for ‘the world’. They ask us to look out to the world and be hopeful, while also highlighting our place within a global community, inviting us to ask what we want for our world, to hold hope for positive change, and to act.  

Cassie explains the thinking behind her Circles of Hope and lantern: 

“For myself, I have the brain which represents mental health. For the community, I’ve got food banks and social groups – a bit like we have here. And then in the world, I’ve got a dove for peace, forest for the environment, and somebody holding water, which represents food and water equality throughout the world.” 

While Verity’s has motifs of water in reference to “swimming in the sea [which makes] you feel hope. While also thinking of the Syrian swimmers that swam to Greece to escape the war, and the Glasgow girls, school girls in Glasgow who got together and campaigned to stop their friends being deported. To me, that’s hope: ordinary people doing extraordinary things.”  

Water shows how we are connected as a global community across our blue planet, and Verity’s piece shows hope as something collective: the feeling of freedom, of the body in water connected to hope for freedom from injustice. Hope gives rise to solidarity, solidarity strengthens hope. Also illustrated by a pink lantern marked with the words HOPE SOLIDARITY JUSTICE UNITY.  

That which we hope for is closely linked to that which gives us hope – for by tending to hope we help it grow. Cassie says that after researching native butterflies when designing her lantern, she saw one on her way home:  

“Because I had focused on finding a picture of it, drawing it, I noticed it. It made me think, this is an area that’s quite built up, but because things are still here there is hope. Nature can be really resilient.”  

She describes moments like these as “glimmers”, a happy feeling or bright moment which offers a glimpse of positive things now and the possibility of more yet to come.  

Meg reflects:  

“Hope happening is a radical thing. It restores your faith. It restores your faith that there are still people that care, and that there are still people who want a better future.”  

This can be felt in their lantern which depicts the earth, and their hope “for the earth to be a better place”. Highlighting also the environmental theme which connects the pieces and the group’s hope for action to halt the climate crisis. David’s too is decorated with stickers of butterflies and horses – “wildlife and the things I care about”  

Sam and the crafters invited visitors at the Festival to get involved, making messages of hope on luggage tags which will be hung around the community in Beswick – threaded on trees and railings, glimmers within the everyday.  

The exhibition attests to fact we make hope happen together, that we find hope in holding space to imagine its arrival, and that in looking, we might find it is always already here.  

The text on the banner reads: HANDS HOLDING HOPE AROUND A BIG BEAUTIFUL WORLD 

Meg explains: “It takes a lot of people to hold people up. And I think if everyone kind of believes in hope, there’s more chance of good stuff happening in the world.” 

Visit the Exhibition at the Royal Exchange Theatre, from November 23rd, and your own Circles of Hope here. 

A free craft drop-in for local residents, Chatty Craft runs every other Thursday, at Beswick Library.  

Chatty Craft is a Local Exchange project, created by our Beswick, Clayton and Openshaw Ambassadors for local people.