Making Ties

Aya Haidar & Belvedere Community Centre

Making Ties is a long-term quilting project developed by artist Aya Haidar in collaboration with groups at Belvedere Community Centre.

Over nine months Aya Haidar has been working with staff, volunteers and groups at Belvedere Community Centre to trace the histories and journeys that brought people to Bexley, or meant that they never left.

Through the process of conversation and craft, each member of the community is invited to create and contribute a hand-stitched sampler that depicts their own story, in their own way.

At the end of the project in spring 2022, all of the samplers will be patched together to create an inter-generational quilt that reflects the ever-changing face of the community in Bexley.

Aya can be found at the community centre most Wednesday mornings deep in conversation with local residents about what keeps them connected to the place they call home or carefully exchanging skills through the shared labour of craft.

If you would like to get involved in this project please visit Belvedere Community Centre and talk to a member of staff or alternatively, you can contact office@belvederecommunitycentre.org.uk or call 020 8311 5550 to find out more.

Aya Haidar is a London-based Lebanese artist whose practice develops artworks through conversations around shared interests and concerns relating to home, diaspora, memory and imagination – often using embroidering, craft and collage. Past works have focussed on the recycling of found and disposable objects making works that explore loss, migration and memory, with a personal connection to the history of a region [the Middle East] explored through the histories contained within personal objects/belongings. Haidar re-uses such objects to re-create narratives, to explore memory relating to home, diaspora, memory and imagination, producing hand-embroidered interventions onto culturally and historically specific objects.