A MUSEUM has joined forces with different groups around the region to celebrate its latest exhibition with a series of kindness quilts.

North Country Quilts: In Celebration of New Acquisitions opened on May 17 at The Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, but the education team has been busy behind the scenes working with schools, care homes and community groups on several kindness quilt projects to complement the display.

The projects are based on the story “The Kindness Quilt” by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace and in one scheme, 100 children from five schools in County Durham meet for weekly zoom lessons with the artist Claire Ford alongside ten residents at two care homes in Barnard Castle.

During those zoom lessons they take inspiration from the book and exhibition to produce mixed media segments of a quilt ranging from stencilled and felted fabric to paper collage.

These will then be put together to create a kindness quilt.

The children and elderly people taking part in the sessions are able to talk to each other about their thoughts and feelings as they work on the squares.

The project proved so popular that it’s been rolled out to another 11 schools in County Durham and North Yorkshire, with the textile artist Charlotte Pyrah delivering outreach sessions with a focus on holding hands, which will be made into a strippy style quilt with 11 rows, one from each school.

Then 40 schools will take part in a printing webinar on June 14 to make a giant kindness quilt, which will be around six metres wide by around 4.5 metres deep.

The museum has also joined forces with the Pimms and Needles community groups, who have produced a quilt in a stand-alone project that has echoes of the themes of the kindness quilt.

It is also working with members of the BAME community in Middlesbrough to produce an International quilt, which will be made from silk painted panels and sewn inserts.

The museum’s education coordinator, Julia Dunn, said: “We were delighted to be able to continue our outreach work with care homes in Barnard Castle at the same time as working with school children in the area by creating this fun intergenerational project.

"We’ve been overwhelmed by the number of groups and schools wanting to take part in the kindness quilt project.

"It’s really captured people’s imaginations and we want to embrace that enthusiasm by creating a further Great Giant Kindness Quilt.

"We invite people to forward squares that are 15cm square that can be assembled in the Museum to create an artistic and personal response to the project.

"They can be made from paper or material and have words, images or patterns and they’ll be joined together to go into a really wonderful mixed media display that will go on show later this year.”