التطريز
الفلسطيني Palestinian
Embroidery:
لتمكين Empowering
المرأة Women
وتعزيز and
Strengthening
المجتمع
Communities

This exhibition celebrates outcomes from the workshops and delivers a peaceful message about cultural exchange and mutual understanding.

Artists, researchers and experts in Palestinian embroidery, including practitioners and facilitators in the West Bank who spoke to the group via Skype, provided a background to the practical workshops and the event.

The last workshop of the series highlighted the relevance of communal hand-worked textiles in building and maintaining resilient communities and the benefits of the conviviality that such practices encourage.

Unfortunately, the Skype meet up with artist Majd Adbel Hamid was cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances.

This workshop explored knitting traditions in Scotland with a presentation from textile designer and knit expert Christie Alexander from the Glasgow School of Art.

Christie spoke to the group about her own practice with a focus on the significance of the ‘motif’ within Scottish knitting traditions. Significantly, the snowflake motif, common in Shetland knitting, is similar to the Palestinian Star of Bethlehem motif workshop participants have been practising.

At this workshop, researcher Olivia Mason described experiences from three months living with Palestinian families and suggested that through the ‘home’ we can learn about Palestinian everyday life, form new relationships and experience some of Palestine’s rich and inspiring cultural heritage.

On International Women’s Day Carol Morton spoke about investing in culture, identity and hope.

Carol has been working with Palestinian embroiderers since 1988 when she set up the project ‘Craftaid’ while living in Jerusalem during the first Palestinian Intifada. Determined to help Palestinian women across the West Bank and Gaza in their efforts to support their families Carol has established shops in Jerusalem and in Edinburgh that market Palestinian handmade traditional crafts.

In 2007 when Glasgow was twinned with the Palestinian city of Bethlehem the Glasgow City Depute Lord Provost Christine Devine spoke of Glasgow and Bethlehem’s “friendship links going back many years”.

This friendship was celebrated during the workshop with a focus on Bethlehem’s distinctive couching in silk, gold and silver threads and in circular and zigzag patterns. This decoration gave the Bethlehem embroidery style a unique appearance and made it very popular in other villages and towns throughout Palestine.

Considering pattern, placement and colour was the focus of the workshop as participants took direction from traditional Palestinian embroidery motifs and colour combinations.

Unfortunately, due to an electricity cut in Idna south west of Hebron, Nawal Slemiah from Women in Hebron was unable to Skype with the workshop.

This workshop reflected on floral and geometric patterns within Palestinian and Scottish textile traditions and included a Skype meet up with Shirabe Yamada, the Executive Director of Sunbula in Jerusalem.

Shirabe spoke to the group from Sunbula, a not-for-profit fair trade organisation committed to promoting social justice and economic empowerment for the marginalised in Palestine through supporting local artisans and traditional handicrafts.

Addressing different forms of invisible knowledges this workshop began with a presentation from Maria Grazia Imperiale who provided an academic background to frame the workshop series, encouraging participants to reflect on the act of making and, more specifically, the act of practising Palestinian embroidery as a form of cultural resistance.

Grazia’s talk explored two key themes: issues of representation and the ‘Question of Palestine’ and cultural resistance.

This workshop focused on the small-scale experience of hand embroidery as a socially-engaged practice that places importance on personal and community relationships as well as the possibility of large-scale social and political change.

The workshop began with a presentation from artist and researcher Sinead O'Donnell Dunn who described the learning, practice and sharing of Palestinian cultural activities, which contribute to building a coherent national identity and economic independence.

Sinead highlighted the achievements and determination among Palestinian women with the example of the Women in Hebron embroidery co-operative who have developed traditional women’s Palestinian embroidery to build a resilient and connected community.

During the workshop participants learnt and practised a Palestinian cross-stitch technique, working the cross-stitch horizontally, vertically and diagonally, while sharing their own experiences of women’s domestic crafts and traditions. One Palestinian participant with excellent knowledge of hand embroidery confidently attributed her skills to her mother’s teaching, explaining that her mother, now in her 90s, continues to practice the traditional techniques and motifs in her home in Galilee.

Many thanks to Glasgow Women's Library for their hosting and plentiful cups of tea, to Sinead whose presentation comfortably argued that the ideal of socially-engaged crafting holds true, and to the brilliant women who participated.