July 2025 We Care Wednesday

July 2025 We Care Wednesday

In the spring Cambridge Wildlife Arts reached out to see if we could assist with a banner making project that they had begun. Lisa G. (instructor, events liaison, answerer-of-emails) gave some solid suggestions and offered up gather here's weekly Craft Nite as a possible way to gather and assist with their appliqué project. All of this does take funding though and we hope that with this month's We Care Wednesday we can also provide them with the materials needed for this really cool project. (Have you noticed that it's small businesses that donate their time and resources to cool projects? Even though they are tight on time and resources? Thanks for helping us help others when you shop on Wednesdays!)

Here's a little bit about the project:

Inspired by historical and current protest posters, banners, and bedsheet paintings, including the fabric banners of Aram Han Sifuentes and the block print banners of Peter Schumann, Cambridge Wildlife Arts will host a series of sessions that welcome members of the public to sit around a table and stitch a single embroidered and/or appliqued banner meant for use in vigils, protests, and parades. Echoing the suffragettes, the use of wildlife imagery combined with a single word emphasizing our commonality with nature on the banner emphasizes our resilience and interdependence with each other as does the experience of creating something from fiber working in a group or in a circle, common to many cultures and historical moments. The banner will be worked on in more than one venue, rotating within Cambridge starting on April 26...The banner itself will be sued in the 2025 Honk! Parade in Somerville/Cambridge and will be lent for use in other events by arrangement once it is completed.

On Monday, July 7, 2025 we invite you to join us for Monday Open Craft Nite to work on these banners - should the weather be nice and comfortable we'll meet at the patio tables out front of the store. No experience is necessary but we love our stitching goddesses with swift needle and thread! All are welcome and per usual, we'll have some gather here folks present to lend a hand. There is a lot happening right now...and it's easier to despair but it's a privilege to do so. Many cannot. We CAN come together, collectively work on building community, resilience, and hope.

Interested in volunteering with Cambridge Wildlife Arts? They have a zoom training at 8 PM coming up TOMORROW, July 3!

As always, you can DONATE directly to Cambridge Wildlife Arts.

*Since launching the We Care Wednesday initiative in January 2017 we have donated over $96,647 to a variety of nonprofits and mutual aid funds doing essential work in our community as well as other places. From the Mayor's Disaster Fund to BAGLY to Abortion Access Front and Material Aid and Advocacy. We select organizations that we feel represent not only our commitment to a better, more equitable world but also our desire to "do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can."

Back to blog