Eid Textile Tales

This film centres on the making of a narrative textile that was made during lockdown and that explores women’s untold domestic experiences of Ramadan and Eid. The textile is a co-produced collaborative piece, created during Ramadan 2021, with a group of Muslim refugee and asylum seeker women from Praxis in Tower Hamlets.

The project originally aimed to generate interfaith conversation, through workshop participants making together and sharing memories of Eid celebrations in their different countries of origin, contrasted with their experience as refugees in the UK. The outputs were to include a narrative textile piece, podcast and a live launch event.

But the world changed when COVID-19 happened. After delaying the project for almost a year, Teresa Hare Duke, the artist, eventually adapted the model and delivered it remotely. The textile and the film also include the women’s experiences of the pandemic.

Rather than making and talking face to face, the group communicated via Zoom, on mobile phones. Participants learnt techniques through demonstrations and drawings were done from photographs shared online. Individually, the women crafted patchwork pieces at home with materials sent by post. These were then returned and stitched together.

Many themes emerged including how nuanced Muslim practice is; how the home, became even more important as a place of worship during the closure of mosques; how rituals and traditions were observed in shared housing; how much they all missed sharing food with friends and family; how isolated some participants felt.

The project undoubtedly would have taken a very different shape, had participants managed to do it as originally planned. Yet despite the limitations of working online, it became a platform for creative collaboration that produced a sharing of stories, a bond and an outcome that the women are collectively very proud of.

Artist -Teresa Hare Duke and Facilitator - Nishta Mauree. Made by Praxis participants from Bangladesh, Pakistan, Morocco, Nigeria, UK, Algeria, Ethiopia.

Supported by the Mayor of London’s Culture Seeds Fund.