Stitches in Time

Who we are

Who we are

We are a welcoming, local arts charity, established in 1993 and embedded in our community.

We work collaboratively with our local community, to devise and deliver projects to creatively address the needs faced by people we work with in our local area.

More than just sewing, the support we offer starts with developing creative skill, but expands and wraps around to support the range of needs and aspirations of our beneficiaries.

Our charitable aims are to:

• Provide a forum to enable culturally diverse groups to work together.
• Run educational programmes to raise levels of achievement.
• Raise levels of confidence and skill based learning for women, young people and older people.
• Create partnerships between individuals in the voluntary, statutory and private sectors.

What we do

We deliver a core scheme of education & community arts programmes, public commissions and training courses in visual arts and textiles.

Small, but wide reaching, we engage with over 3,000 people per year, using creative projects as a focus for enhancing skill, integration, confidence and community development.

OUR MAIN ACTIVITIES LAST YEAR:

• Over 300 hard-to-reach, BAME, long-term unemployed women with English as a second language joined a creative class, to improve their skills, confidence, English and employability. 98% of women said they had increased their confidence from coming to our classes.

• We provided 4 weeks of arts activities for 30 children per day, over 76 in total, aged 5-15. In a borough with the highest rates of child poverty and children facing multiple disadvantage, 100% of children said they increased in confidence from coming to our Children in Need funded playscheme.
• 23 elders facing isolation attended our weekly sewing social class, meeting with over 200 people from the local community, giving embroidery demonstrations and inviting the public to take part in a large-scale embroidery of a historic map of Stepney.
• In 2016-18, we held 924 creative workshops and classes in 25 locations, and a core programme of 14 creative & empowering classes each week, in 5 locations throughout Tower Hamlets. 
• 58 women with little or no employment experience gained volunteering experience on our programmes.
• We made 3,293 items through Fabricworks, one enterprise arm of Stitches in Time. FabricWorks matches the need for London-based textile and garment-manufacturing with the need for fair, supportive employment opportunities for migrant women with little employment opportunity.
• We launched our fourth Mini Stitches collection, a community-made childrenswear branch, designed and made by 20 local women, some facing multiple barriers to employment and marginalisation, who have become members of our FabricWorks classes.

Why we do it

Our creative arts, education and enterprise programmes are developed with, and at the request of our community, addressing local needs and issues prevalent. We work with culturally diverse groups: elders facing isolation, long-term unemployed, migrant and refugee women, and children living in poverty. Holistic support and multiple progression routes, including volunteering, mentoring, skill-learning, work experience and professional development are embedded across our projects.

Our charity’s enterprise arms FabricWorks and Mini Stitches were developed with local women to support creative aspirations.