Creative Kernow
Natalia Eernstman tells us how a community responded to the PPE shortage during Lockdown.
At the beginning of April, responding to a lack in PPE, a Facebook Group was set up to create cloth masks for Cornish community carers. In the 6 weeks that followed, we supplied over 4000 masks -all sewn by volunteers from their homes across Cornwall.
Orders were managed by a central team with a main coordinator, administrator, website manager, accountant and sewing mentors. Makers followed an approved mask pattern, using recycled materials (mainly high quality bedlinen) and used the FB group to assist and encourage each other.
Once they finished a batch, they were given an address of an individual or organisations that had placed an order and they sent their masks directly to the user. We followed strict safety guidelines around picking up donated materials and packaging of masks.
The sewers transformed the world through making, modestly but relentlessly. Each from their home, often fit around work (many of them are nurses or carers sewing for others) and whilst caring for children, they selflessly, almost silently, yet powerfully, made a significant change to the safety of others, one masks at the time.
When orders started to reduce in late May as more PPE became available commercially, I received funding from Feast Cornwall’s Re-ignition fund, which enabled Redruth-based artist Caroline Wilkins to create a screen-print (above). The print was sent to around 200 sewers that were in our database, to thank them and celebrate their effort, giving them something that they could remember this time by. A difficult time that became meaningful through their creative, collective action. The sewers’ response to the screen-print arriving on their doorstep was one of great, often very emotional gratitude that their efforts had been recognised and that they had been given something beautiful in exchange, something which, like their masks, had been laboriously crafted with love and care for a fellow human being.