In 2007, the EAST BRIGHTON BYGONES Local History Society received a generous grant from Awards for All to hold an exhibition of archive photographs.
In collaboration with community artists CLOWD 9, the group printed out three giant maps, each 10 feet high by 4 feet wide. These maps were the 1792 Terrier or ownership map; one from 1880 and a street map from 1972, seen together they charted the history and development of East Brighton.
Thinking about how to involve local primary schoolchildren in the exhibition, we came up with the idea of holding workshops to introduce children to the craft of knitting.
We soon realised, however, that knitting the map was a little too ambitious for such young, novice knitters (they decorated the table cloths for our cafe area instead) and decided to try to enlist visitors to the exhibition itself.
CLOWD 9 artist Hazel Imbert devised an innovative process of tracing over the strips on the printed map to use as knitting patterns. Hazel made up kits so that all the volunteers would be using the same colours, although the choice of stitch was left up to the individual volunteers.