Cultural Threads: Celebrating Identity & Culture
Cultural Threads is a workshop and exhibition series celebrating identity and culture. A group of creators is invited each year to join an immersive interactive and communal experience, upcycling an article of clothing to represent their identity and respond to the question...
Who Am I?
About Cultural Threads
The mission of the project is to utilitize textiles to create as we learn, respect, and celebrate our stories, connecting with ourselves and others in a safe space.
- The series begins with an online orientation, meeting each other and thinking about the events, experiences, and ideas that brought us to where, who and what we are today.
- Workshop 1 is a day of dreaming, gathering resources, and beginning to create.
- Open shop days at the Styles Shop on Historic Grand Avenue provide equipment, materials and coaching to continue the work.
- Workshop 2 is storytelling day! Everyone arrives in their complete--or almost complete--garments. Stories of life and garments are shared with food and caring creatives.
- Workshop 3 is photography day, when professional portraits are taken.
- A culminating exhibition allows for creators and visitors to wear cultural garments in a living gallery. Professional portraits on the walls are accompanied by the artists' statements about who they are and what story their garment tells.
Each garment is a reflection on a life, while the exhibition is a reflection of the community created over three months. Click through the galleries linked below to see each artist's work.
The Creators, the Garments & the Stories 2024
A heartfelt thank you to our collaborators, funders and sponsors for helping us to realize these projects in full.
