Stitching up Oxford Road

‘Stitching Up Oxford Road’ is a new project creating original art from recycled plastic bags along Manchester’s Oxford Road.

The scheme, involving members of the public and the Oxford Road community, is the brainchild of MMU lecturer and internationally-respected textile artist Lynn Setterington.

Lynn takes cuttings from plastic bags and uses them to stitch together tiny parachutes called ‘Suffolk puffs’, hundreds of these are then combined to create large-scale pieces of textile art.

Lynn said: “I read somewhere that every person in the country uses on average 134 plastic bags every year. The idea of ‘Stitching Up Oxford Road’ is to make something positive out of plastic carrier bags; a wasteful and harmful product can be transformed into a positive and thought provoking textile.”

Get involved

Lynn and the MMU team will be placing ‘Plastic Bag Collection Points’ in foyers at the following venues on Oxford Road:

-The Whitworth Art Gallery
-WRVS Café, Manchester Royal Infirmary
-Cavendish and Ormond Buildings at MMU’s All Saints Campus
-Eighth Day Café

You can bring your unwanted plastic bags to any of these collection points up until Friday the 10th of February. Collection Day up and down Oxford Road on Monday the 6th of February.

Public Workshops

A series of workshops in which members of the public are invited to drop in and contribute to the making of the textile piece are scheduled for February and March in the following venues and times:

-Whitworth Art Gallery: Sat 11th and Sat 18th Feb, Thurs 2nd March, Tues 21st March (10:30 – 15.30)
-Manchester Museum: Mon 20th Feb, Wed 22nd Feb, Fri 24th Feb (10:30 – 12:00)
Wed 22nd March (10:30 – 15:30)
-Cornerhouse: Thurs 23rd Feb (14:30 – 16.30)
-MMU Geoffrey Manton Building: Fri 10th March (10:30 -15.30) Drop in only
-Eighth Day: Mon 27th Feb (17.30 – 19.30)

The piece will be hung for public display initially on MMU’s All Saints campus in May 2006 before touring up and down selected venues on Oxford Road for the rest of the year.

For further information please contact Sam Gray on 0161 247 3429 or by email s.gray@mmu.ac.uk

Notes to Editors

Manchester’s Oxford Road contains some of the UK’s finest cultural and intellectual assets and is at the ‘creative core’ of Manchester’s plans to be a ‘Knowledge Capital’.

This project is supported by North West Development Agency and the Higher Education Funding Council for England through the HEIF 2 Collaborative fund and by the Regional Office at Manchester Metropolitan University. Participating venues are: Manchester Museum, The Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University, Cornerhouse, BBC, St. Peter’s Centre, The 8th Day, The Aquatics Centre, Dancehouse, the Pankhurst Centre and the Deaf Institute.

Lynn Setterington is an internationally acclaimed textile artist, trained at Goldsmiths College in London. She has widely exhibited at galleries including the Whitechapel Gallery and the V & A in London, the International Quilt Study Centre at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln, US, the Whitworth Art Gallery and the Museum of Science and Industry’s Textile Gallery. Her quilts are held in major permanent collections around the UK. Since 1992 Lynn has been a senior lecturer on the BA (Hons) Degree in Embroidery at Manchester Metropolitan University.