Quilts for Care Leavers
Lemn Sissay is a poet and writer who experienced the care system between the ages of 12 and 18. His experiences have found expression in many of his poems. In 2019 he published his memoir, My Name Is Why, which tells the story of his childhood through his own words and through the actual documents which record how he was viewed and processed by the care system. The book is widely available in local libraries. In 2020 he was the subject of the BBC programme Imagine, which can still be viewed on the BBC iPlayer with this link: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/imagine-2020-lemn-sissay-the-memory-of-me. He recalls being the only black child in a northern town in the 1970s.
Sissay's experience shows how traumatic being in care can be, and the lasting effects it has on people.
His personal experience led him to start Christmas Dinners for Care Leavers in 2015, which is run by volunteers around the country. Out of the dinners came Quilts for Care Leavers (Q4CL), which was the brainchild of Maggie Lloyd-Jones. Maggie will be speaking to us at our Zoom meeting on 21 September and we hope you will join us for what should be an inspiring talk.
In the meantime, do see this post from Lemn Sissay's blog to understand more about the quilt project.
Quilts for Care Leavers. - Lemn Sissay
We hope knowing more about how much the quilts mean to the young people may inspire more of you to contribute blocks to the London Quilters' initiative. So far we hope to make at least four quilts, but with your help perhaps even more.
Lemn Sissay is a poet and writer who experienced the care system between the ages of 12 and 18. His experiences have found expression in many of his poems. In 2019 he published his memoir, My Name Is Why, which tells the story of his childhood through his own words and through the actual documents which record how he was viewed and processed by the care system. The book is widely available in local libraries. In 2020 he was the subject of the BBC programme Imagine, which can still be viewed on the BBC iPlayer with this link: www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/imagine-2020-lemn-sissay-the-memory-of-me. He recalls being the only black child in a northern town in the 1970s.
Sissay's experience shows how traumatic being in care can be, and the lasting effects it has on people.
His personal experience led him to start Christmas Dinners for Care Leavers in 2015, which is run by volunteers around the country. Out of the dinners came Quilts for Care Leavers (Q4CL), which was the brainchild of Maggie Lloyd-Jones. Maggie will be speaking to us at our Zoom meeting on 21 September and we hope you will join us for what should be an inspiring talk.
In the meantime, do see this post from Lemn Sissay's blog to understand more about the quilt project.
Quilts for Care Leavers. - Lemn Sissay
We hope knowing more about how much the quilts mean to the young people may inspire more of you to contribute blocks to the London Quilters' initiative. So far we hope to make at least four quilts, but with your help perhaps even more.
You can see from the image above that the virtual quilt is growing almost daily so the time has come for individual quilts to be assembled from the blocks. Our member, Anita O'Brien is doing sterling work with this project and has created the first quilt top so that you can see the progress being made.