Connecting and reflecting during Covid

The Bromley Bow Centre community has been delighted to be part of an arts project exploring collage for older people with their friends and family.

‘Let’s Stick Together’ took place throughout winter and spring 2021. It explored the process of collage, using found image and sound, and how it might reflect our lives through uncertainty.

Weekly online sessions resulted in the production of podcasts and a ‘Mail Art’ project. Hundreds of postcards were created and sent out that invited each recipient to ‘Please forward’. Each card shared jointly created images and links to short sound pieces in podcast format, recording the stories of the current times.

The project brought together visual and participatory artist Emily Tracy, radio producer Sarah Cuddon and writer Line Langebek from ‘Library of Change’, together with participants at the Bromley By Bow Centre, and from around the country. Online and via the postal service, over 40 collages, 2 podcasts, and 1 poem, were produced on kitchen tables which reflected personal experiences over the last year or two.

1000 beautiful postcards have been produced and have been winging their way around the UK and beyond, to share the results of the project direct to people’s doorsteps. The postcards are being used to reconnect and say hello to friends and family after 18 months of lockdowns and restrictions on our lives.

You can listen to two of the podcast collections and postcards are available to collect at the Centre, or if you’d like a pack sent to you please contact: Khadeja.Chowdhury@bbbc.org.uk 07951 034656.

Follow the journey on Instagram.

Supported by The Arts Council.