Interweaving Our Communities brings together 3 generations including migrant/refugee children and parents/carers from the Fitzroy Primary School community. Together with community volunteers, the group is collaborating on the creation of a textiles. A community-based textile artist is working with the group on a weekly basis over a period of 12 weeks. The project provides our migrant/refugee parents with opportunities throughout the year to make new friends, share their stories and develop mutual understandings.

The Arts Program within the school is being used to address the isolation and social exclusion experienced by migrant/refugee parents and older members of the community. The model established by the project is not only of benefit to the school but also to the wider community. We have already collaborated with the Brotherhood of St Laurence on a number of smaller community projects aimed at strengthening links between all members of the community. This project builds upon this solid foundation.

Volunteers are drawn from a group of active volunteers already participating in school and community programs. Our volunteers are very enthusiastic. The Brotherhood of St Laurence, through its partnership work with the Fitzroy Learning Network, also provides volunteers already active in the local community.

We welcome older members of the community with skills to share including knitting, weaving and sewing. This project enables older people within the community to share cultural knowledge, communicate positive values and involves parents in teaching and nurturing their children. Students have the opportunity to learn from the past, understand cultural identity and to be further connected to the community. The relationships being established are cross-generational as well as cross-cultural. The process of working with textiles is a soothing, calming activity and we believe it will promote relaxation, conversation and mutual understanding of our cultural diversity and our commonality.

The textile art being created by the project will tell the stories of the journey undertaken by the parents/carers in the weaving group. The final product will visually represent the story of the project as well as the stories of individual families. Parents will tell their stories, and children will dramatise and write about these stories in language activities. A short film of the children’s dramatisation is being produced. The textile artist will then guide the textile group, consisting of children, parents and community volunteers through a process of weaving/sewing visual representations of these stories.

There will be an additional layer of visual representation as the process and the final products will be photographed and these will be published in a book. Finally, there will be an exhibition of the textile art at a local art gallery. As a result of having parents and children working side-by-side on the tapestry, we hope that parents will become more engaged in their children’s education. Follow this link to see some photos taken of people involved in the project.