crossing borders with stitches
Six Branch is a collaboration between students of Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and the Women in Hebron cooperative in Palestine. It is a platform for cultural exchange through textile design, celebrating traditional embroidery skills passed from generation to generation.
Women In Hebron is a collective of 120 embroiderers based in the Hebron area of Palestine. They teach traditional skills and produce textiles drawing inspiration from patterns passed down through the decades.
Nawal Slemiah, the founding director of the collective, met Linda Florence, Senior Lecturer at Central Saint Martins in 2015. Slemiah was eager for the collective to find new challenges for making and new avenues for selling, while Florence wanted to open the students’ practice to new ways of working, and the collaborative project was born. Myself, Sabrina Lopez and Caf Fean joined to make the Six Branch team.
Since then, the two groups have been working together to establish a new ethical design society that travels across borders.
This project is a starting-point, with the hope that a series of collaborative collections can grow, promoting cultural exchange through the stitches of embroidery.
We're so very proud of the beautiful designs the students and the cooperative have produced, and we have exciting leads we hope will create new opportunities to ensure the Women in Hebron go from strength to strength.