A series of collaboratively embroidered textile panels
Common Threads is a collaborative embroidery project initiated by Alice Kettle, developed from her Stitch a Tree project for the 2019 Karachi Biennial. The project brings together artisans from the Ra’ana Liaquat Craftsmen’s Colony (RLCC) in Pakistan with women from the South Asian diaspora in Britain, creating a shared body of work developed across borders, cultures and communities.
Kettle first began working with the women at RLCC on Stitch a Tree for the Karachi Biennial. She subsequently commissioned them to begin a series of partially completed embroidered panels, which she then developed collaboratively with participants in the UK. Through stitch, the works became a dialogue across cultures, connecting makers separated by geography but united through shared creative practice.
The first phase of the project was presented at Arnolfini in Bristol in partnership with the charity Bridges for Communities. Refugee and asylum-seeking women took part in Stitching Together, continuing work on the panels initiated by the women at RLCC in Pakistan. These collaborative works were exhibited as part of Alice Kettle's exhibition Thread: Breathing Stories into New Materials in 2023.
Later that year, as part of the British Textile Biennial, Kettle invited participants from Community Arts by ZK in Pendle, the Bangladesh Welfare Association in Burnley, and Shantona Women's Centre in Leeds to respond to partially completed panels from RLCC. Working alongside textile artists Rabia Begum Sharif and Elnaz Yazdani, participants shared stories of family, migration and home with their counterparts in Karachi. The resulting embroidered panels were exhibited at Blackburn Cathedral.
In 2024, two new Common Threads panels were commissioned by Harewood House as part of the third edition of the Harewood Biennial, Create/Elevate, which celebrated the power of craft to surprise, inspire and bring people together to imagine new worlds. The completed works were exhibited at Harewood House from 1 June to 20 October 2024.