Stori’r Cwilt
This is the story of the Utopias Bach Quilt as Policy Experiment: a collaboration between Utopias Bach and Rewilding the Artist.
By Lisa Hudson
The Cwilt Utopias Bach Quilt
The Cwilt Utopias Bach Quilt started back in 2023 when we were considering the possibility of Utopias Bach becoming an organisation. We were thinking of this partly in response to wanting to be a partner to Rewilding the Artist (and meeting what Arts Council Wales required of ‘partner organisations’), and partly as a way of exploring what Utopias Bach is/might be.
We asked ourselves how could we fit our unique way of working into something that would be acceptable as an ‘organisation’, without compromising what we are.
One requirement of Arts Council Wales, is that the organisation needs to have policies: equal opportunities, safeguarding, etc. We asked ourselves ‘How can we meet this requirement without compromising our unique way of working?’; ‘What would a Utopias Bach Policy look like?’ What even is a policy? How can we Rewild policy so that it is accessible, relevant and reflexive?
As Utopias Bach ‘Collective’ we had principles and processes that we had co-created through experiments and discussion, fuelled by a desire to find the best way to work together with each other and more-than-human beings we encounter. A policy felt like something different. A policy is usually a document, constructed by a few, used to prescribe a uniform procedure. Once an organisation has a policy, it tends to become a written document that is meant to be read, but never questioned.
Our first step was to hold a Collaboratory and bring the question to the collective. Gaia Redgrave and I hosted an online session (Septembe 2023) where we imagined Utopias Bach as an eco-system, asking the question – What does the Utopias Bach Ecosystem need to keep it healthy and thriving? The hope was to turn the responses into policy in some way. We asked ourselves ‘What could be the alternative to a policy document?’
We explored the idea of seeing Utopias Bach as an eco-system, and the ‘policy’ being an expression of the properties that make our ecosystem function. This was a difficult metaphor. As we talked, we considered the dynamics of an ecosystem. We recognised the frictions and tensions within it that are constantly fluid and shifting, a complexity of inter-relational interdependence that is almost overwhelming.
This took us back to the simpler question of ‘What would a Utopias Bach Policy look and feel like?’ It needed to be something where the process of development is more important than the resulting document. Could it be an iterative thing? Something that requires a response and an interaction? A non-linear experience? A meditation? A quilt?
The quilt idea kept coming back into the conversation, changing from a casual thrown away example into a real possibility. A quilt is comforting and expansive, it can wrap around a person (or an organisation) and envelop it in comfort. Quilts are soft, without sharp edges or hard surfaces to bruise or harm. A quilt can be collaborative and co-created, comprising of many different pieces. Our quilt could be conceptual, it could exist is many places at once and some patches can be performative, or musical, or video. Some could be poetry, or a garden, or a photograph. We could bring it together as an exhibition, or on a website and it can continue to develop as we develop, in a constant state of becoming.
We held three more quilting Collaboratories; hybrid meetings where we discussed the idea of the quilt and what we were including in it while each working on our pieces. The quilt has become a constant project, gently running in the background for most of 2024 until we started to question the process. Was it working? Did we have any more ideas on how the quilt was policy and how we could keep this policy alive and responsive as we continue to evolve and change?
As the winter months of 2024 drew in, and the days became short, Utopias Bach started holding Stitch a Sgwrs sessions at Caban Bryn Refail using Uned 8 community Room. Some of us brought our quilt pieces and some brought other projects they were working on.
We spent time together, stitching and talking in a warm space. We talked about how to bring our quilt into focus, how to make it something that functions as policy in a new way. Is it something that we would sew together and wrap around new members to introduce them to the group? Does everyone have to make a piece so that they can understand the policy? How can we make it relevant and useful?
During the Sgwrs Chwilgar, Curious Conversation (2024 Carreg Creative and Utopias Bach) in the spirit of Fluxus, we had explored written or drawn ‘scores’ as a way to bring embodied, engaged experience within and beyond the confines of a Cabinet in Storiel Gallery. Simultaneously, textile artist Lisbet Williams had been participating in a quilting project that used scores to disrupt the usually regular and measured art of quilting, and she brought the scores she had been working from to the stitching group.
In February 2025, we held another quilting Collaboratory in which we decided to explore scores for our quilt. We are exploring whether the embodied act of making with a purpose and a focus is a way of better understanding the complexities of our Utopias Bach ecosystem, without the impossible task of putting it into words. Is it that by explaining and sharing the process of making the quilt to new people that we meet, we can keep the policy alive, allowing for changes with each retelling?
We are collecting them on a Padlet online and are responding to them on our quilt pieces.
If you would like to take part, please do so! And you can add to the padlet or email Lisa.
Examples of scores
Inclusion Score (Lisa Hudson)
1. Find at least four small objects with different qualities
2. Include them in your quilt
3. Make it work as a whole.
Response to Inclusion Score (Gaia Redgrave)
Score (Ilsa Elford)
Consider your spirit animal and consider how that animal might approach a group.
Boundaries Score (Sarah Holyfield)
Imagine a fence
What is it made of?
Make a gate
Walk through
What is on the other side?
To see and hear more of the Cwilt Utopias Bach quilt see our quilting page here:
Utopias Bach Ecosystem by Michael Jepson