A march and “living art work” will take place tomorrow to celebrate the centenary of women getting the vote.
Processions will see women take to the streets in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast and London to mark the anniversary.
Women on the march will be given wraps in either green, purple or white to wear and arranged into groups, creating the illusion of a flowing river of colour throughout the city streets.
Processions has also commissioned more than 100 organisations to create banners for the event expressing the concerns and hopes of modern women.
The Scottish Refugee Council is one of these organisations. Pauline Diamond Salim, media manager for the group, expressed that they weren’t initially sure about joining the march.
“On the one hand, we were excited at the thought of thousands of women across the country gathering to mark this moment in history. On the other hand, there was a definite sense of, well, perhaps this isn’t quite for us.
“Most of the women we work with, those with refugee status and those still in the asylum system, don’t have the right to vote in the UK. How could we celebrate women’s suffrage when it hadn’t yet been achieved a full one hundred years after the 1918 legislation?”
Last week, the Scottish government put forward plans to allow refugees to vote in local and Holyrood elections – but they still won’t have their voice heard at Westminster.
Pauline says the women discussed this concern and others while creating the banner, in order to create an art work that would represent their experiences.
“We talked about overcoming language barriers, hostility and racism, both institutional and in everyday encounters.
“We talked about the never ending exhaustion and insecurity of the asylum system, about raising children alone far from family networks. About enforced poverty and poor accommodation. About cultural expectations of women both here in the UK and in the countries they grew up in.
“We talked about friendship and community, creating a place to belong and welcoming other women into this place.
“As we talked we cut and sewed pieces of fabric. We made shapes and letters and words in an attempt to sum up the threads of these conversations.”
The group created the banner partly at Glasgow Women’ Library, in sessions led by textile artist Paria Goodarzi.
Pauline added that the sessions weren’t only an opportunity to create art, but for the women to learn about women’s history in the UK.
“Some of the group did not know about the suffragette movement before we began the project. Aleena from Pakistan, whose sewing machine skills we all coveted said: ‘It was a surprise to me to learn about the history of the suffragettes in the UK. I didn’t know about this and it is so totally different from my own cultural background and the history of women I know.'”
Processions will be covered live BBC One and BBC News from around 2pm on Sunday 10 June.
The event is free to attend and you can register here.
PROCESSIONS is produced by arts charity, Artichoke and commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the first world war centenary.
