A community arts residency by Vietnamese-Australian textile artist Phong Chi Lai invites locals to contribute to the final touches of a collaborative textile banner that celebrates the Braybrook community.
Over a three-month period, the project ‘slow colour, community and wellbeing’ invited the Braybrook and wider Maribyrnong community to connect and engage with each other in the process of making a collaborative textile banner.
The local community now has one last opportunity to contribute their creativity to the banner at a workshop on June 21.
Phong has worked with a dedicated group of residents over all stages of the project teaching skills such as dyeing, mending, and patchwork sewing.
“Community members created patchwork squares out of textiles that we dyed with natural materials like plants, flowers and food waste,” explained Phong of how the participants had put their newly acquired skills to use.
“In May, these squares were constructed into a patchwork banner that brought together their individual creative perspective in an original, cohesive way.
“Workshops and drop-in events were accessible for all skill levels, including seasoned quilters and people newer to textiles,” he added.
Once the textile banner was constructed from patchwork squares, the community were invited to contribute ideas for a slogan that summed up what living in Braybrook means to them.
In the upcoming workshop, attendees will apply this slogan onto the collaboratively-made banner.
The finished artwork will act as a shared record of the Braybrook community and the natural surroundings and will be installed prominently at Braybrook Community Hub.
