In recent years our world has seen such a radical and rapid change that perhaps never before in history. Speaking as a professor, an important gap opens up between the knowledge of the "digital avant" world and the current one, and the forms of teaching that generations socialized differently from our young people visibly struggle to understand the right ways to teach and keep the kids involved.
And if all this were not enough, the global trials we have lived and are still experiencing have put us in front of fundamental questions about the approach with which we can touch our children confined in front of the screens even during the ordinary school lessons. ...
Our young people need communities, contacts, social life, they certainly need every possible basis to be able to orient themselves in the globalized and digital world, but our young people also need reflection, to find the inner resources to face situations of crisis, loneliness, disorientation, fear ....
For us, in the Atelier de couture magique, getting together to work with the needle is a form of meditation, of slowing down, of creative concentration, and at the same time, it is also a way to meet friends, to talk small things, or maybe more complex issues that affect us.
The birth of our city "Patchwille" is not the result of an enthusiastic fervor, it was not an easy path. A job that we started in mid-October with great enthusiasm, but which was immediately interrupted by the lockdown in Belgium. Until March we worked on the screen, but only the most passionate have managed to keep the desire to move forward. You can imagine how difficult it is for young people between 7 and 12 years to sew alone in front of a screen, deprived of the best part of this activity, that is the joyful and cheerful exchange that we have during sewing lessons. Then finally from April we were able to meet and finish the project together.
Looking at the finished work, it is truly a "Patch-work" in the most symbolic sense of all. A world reconstructed from small pieces, and every little piece of fabric is a fragment of the world we knew before the collapse caused by the pandemic,"that has fallen apart". But sewn together with the others, it is a gesture of hope, of reconstruction, trust in a future, which can be , which must be "ideal". Or at least according to the artists-creators of this city of fabrics.
For the realization we have used recycled and natural materials as much as possible, we have coated cardboard for domestic use, and reused ancient sewing objects, buttons etc.
The techniques are: lots of hand embroidery, various patchwork blocks techniques, and free motion sewing.
Adult intervention was limited, some more experienced pupils offered a little help in the assembly.