Since 2012, the Folk and Traditional Arts Program (FTAP) at the Idaho Commission on the Arts has partnered with Artisans for Hope—a non-profit agency in Boise that builds refugee resettlement skills through the use of fiber-related arts—to produce the Story Quilt Project. Story quilts are oral narratives of refugee journeys—from their homelands to resettlement camps to Boise—translated onto quilt-like textiles. The Story Quilt Project documents the oral histories of women refugee-students at Artisans for Hope who come to learn or refine textile skills as they acclimate and adapt to a new land. Once their life-histories are coaxed back into oral circulation, they take scenes or depictions of their stories and transcribe those onto narrative quilted pieces.
Most of the women come from weaving traditions, not quilting, and many have never seen an electric sewing machine let alone thought about translating their life onto a piece of fabric. But storytelling is a part of their worldviews, even if this is the first time they have been allowed to tell their stories freely, openly, and honestly without fear of retribution. These examples of living traditions demonstrate how the visual impact of place affects values related to worldview, occupation, community, and opportunity. In 2015, Artisans for Hope and the FTAP developed and sent the project on the road as an exhibit to travel throughout the state. Titled This Is My Home Now: Narrative Textiles from Idaho Newcomers, the exhibit focuses on rural locations and the FTAP contracts with local and regional arts councils to arrange for venues, volunteer help, programming, and promotion. The exhibit has traveled to 18 locations throughout the state including towns as small as New Meadows (477) and as large as Twin Falls (48,200). The artworks reflect variations on the themes of place, space, and historic and future legacies. They document lives engaged in a process of resettlement and establishment. The political and social conflicts that caused the resettlement coincide with historic movements of people in search of something better, more permanent, more like home. _____ Project Website: click here State: Idaho Category: Education, Health & Wellbeing, Social Justice, Underserved Community Outreach |