American exhibition is a stitch up

A LECTURER from the Manchester School of Art is impressing an international audience with her work.

Lynn Setterington, Senior Lecturer on the Textiles in Practice programme, was invited to guest curate an exhibition in Nebraska.

Signature Cloths focuses on sewn signatures as visual ciphers and as a method of social engagement.

Historical quilts from the International Quilt Study Centre and Museum were displayed alongside contemporary pieces created by Lynn, including several of her collaborative textiles. These included a quilt made with Sreepur village in Bangladesh in 2012 and Remembering Emily, a 10-metre long cloth celebrating suffragette Emily Pankhurst created with students and staff at MMU in 2013.

Inspiring young people

Lynn also worked with refugee children at four schools in Lincoln, Nebraska, to start a collaborative stitched project with them as part of the museum’s public engagement initiative.

The project began in September, and on a return visit this month Lynn went back to the schools to discuss how they were getting on.

The resulting quilt will be donated to the International Quilt Study Centre later this year.

Lynn said: “It was inspiring to see how much they valued the stitch-based work we did together, and teenage boys were equally engaged in the project as girls.”

A keynote address given by Lynn about her collaborations, titled “Stitch (in) a Community Together”.