Armed Forces Day National Event 2019
An original project to create a textile representation
of all 18 community areas of Wiltshire.
Just after the launch of this annual National event earlier this year, I was honoured to be appointed to oversee this amazing community project in February, which is being hosted by Wiltshire County Council in Salisbury at Hudson’s Field.
My task has been to work with 18 community groups throughout Wiltshire: Malmesbury, Chippenham, Lyneham, Calne, Corsham, Marlborough, Melksham, Bradford on Avon, Trowbridge, Westbury, Warminster, Pewsey, Amesbury, Salisbury, South West, Southern, Devizes, Tidworth, to create a piece of textile art to celebrate Wiltshire hosting the Armed Forces Weekend on 28, 29 and 30 June 2019.
The piece will be made up from 18 Portrait A3 sections each made by the different community areas of Wiltshire listed above, which will be joined together to create one large celebratory piece of textile work. The finished piece is to be displayed as a legacy in a number of places such as libraries, museums, hubs and campuses throughout Wiltshire.
Selected groups within in area of Wiltshire have been busy creating an A3 pictorial design, incorporating a range of mediums including tapestry, machine stitch, hand stitch, crochet, knitting and collage. To provide the project with unity, all groups are using the same colour pallet based on a representation of the three forces uniforms: airforce blue, navy and khaki. Also incorporated within each design will be a feature or features which are relevant to the Armed Forces and also mean something to the community.
Visiting the groups and supporting them has been an amazing experience so far – there are so many stories behind the A3 pieces. The groups consist of many enthusiastic and talented people from all walks of life, who are using their skills and knowledge to come together to represent their community. It has been a great pleasure to travel to places and areas of Wiltshire that I did not know existed previously!
All the pieces are to be finished by the end of April, ready for me to start the next stage; putting all 18 pieces together as one pictorial document of Wiltshire and it’s long association with the Armed Forces.
Community Projects
This is in fact one of three projects- the others include a social media photograph campaign and a record breaking attempt to create the largest human poppy.
The Event Programme
Friday 28th June will be an armed forces family event followed by a community day with a parade on Saturday 29th. Sunday 30th will focus on veterans and young people.
Read All About It! Armed Forces Day Textile Piece
Community Textile – Armed Forces Day 2019 National Event Salisbury This entry was posted on June 27, 2019 by Meril Morgan, from ‘The Arts in Wiltshire’. “You may recall we did a call out early this year for a lead artist to work with Wiltshire’s 18 community areas to create a commemorative community textile to celebrate and thank our […]
Armed Forces Day 2019 – Salisbury Event
Wiltshire Council: After being appointed as Lead Artist for Armed Forces Day 2019 by Wiltshire Council to work on a celebratory Textile Project back in February, here are the results: http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/salisbury-afd Working with 18 groups throughout Wiltshire, each group followed the same instructions and colour palette to depict their connection with the Armed Forces […]