The Coventry Banner
Turner Prize 2021 Legacy

Making Participation Easy To Enter

There was no dedicated project budget for this community requirement. My existing working hours and transport were already costed, but there was no budget for new materials or room hire. That constraint became part of the method rather than a reason to shrink the idea. Artichoke donated boxes of unused sash fabric from PROCESSIONS, the 2018 mass participation artwork marking one hundred years since the first women gained the vote in the UK. Those sashes gave everybody the same simple starting point while carrying their own history of public voice. Reusing them was deliberate as well as practical. I was already developing a reuse and recycle philosophy and working in an increasingly carbon sensitive way, so repurposing the main component instead of buying new cloth became part of the artistic thinking as well as the solution to having no materials budget. I deliberately kept the making instructions open. Sewing was welcome, but it was never the price of entry. If somebody had a felt tip pen or lipstick, they could make a mark, say something that mattered to them and be part of the installation.

Before taking up my role at the Herbert, I had already been artist in residence at King Edward VI College. I returned to that existing relationship to trial The Coventry Banner making process with foundation students. Their feedback helped me simplify the guidance and think harder about what a person needed to know without controlling what they made. The public project then had several routes in: supported workshops, collection points for sashes and instructions, drop off points for completed work and independent making at home. For people who were still not coming out because of Covid, I delivered materials directly so they could participate without entering the museum. The Herbert’s original invitation also made clear that art skills were not required and that materials could be sent directly to people unable to access the museum.

Taking The Project To People

Most of the Banner was made out in the community. I actively pitched the idea to groups and then ran sessions in the places where people already met rather than relying on them to come to the Herbert. With no room hire budget, people offered the places they already had: homes, school rooms, halls, rooms in pubs and market stalls. I travelled with a wheelie trolley of partly used art materials rather than buying a new set of supplies for each session. That included community organisations, local junior schools, libraries, Coventry Market, Coventry University art disciplines and Saturday morning sessions with the National Saturday Club at Coventry University. The Herbert’s own record names participants including Grapevine, Art Riot Collective, Escape Arts, Sitting Rooms of Culture, St Oswald’s Church and Tile Hill, alongside many others. Contributions also came from people making independently, Warwick WMS and Array Collective themselves.

One of those places was LTB Showrooms, then based above the Litten Tree in Coventry. I ran banner making there and later returned to LTB for other projects. Looking back, it became one of the mycelium hubs in my Coventry practice: a place where people, ideas and opportunities crossed between projects and where relationships kept growing. I also took the project onto local radio, including BBC CWR and Hillz FM, using those conversations to extend the invitation beyond the places I could physically visit.

Going out into the city was not only about making participation easier. I was also working with the Herbert's business plan in mind, deliberately taking activity into communities and areas the museum had identified as audiences it needed to reach more effectively. The outreach therefore supported the Herbert's audience development targets as well as the creative aims of the project. I hoped the finished installation would create a reason for people to come back into the Herbert. If somebody knew their own banner was hanging in the Covered Court, they could come in to find it and bring family or friends with them, including people who might never otherwise have visited the museum. I later watched that happen as makers returned with people they cared about to show them where their work had been placed.

From Fifty To More Than 280

The original target was around fifty banners, enough to make the curatorial idea feel big and bold in the Herbert’s Covered Court. More than 280 eventually arrived. Word of mouth spread the project beyond people we already knew, and banners continued arriving even after the launch, so I kept adding them to the installation. The subjects were just as varied as the makers: national and global concerns, Coventry issues, personal experiences, humour, protest, wellbeing and hopes for change all sat together. Research published later by the University of Birmingham records how a project expected to produce fifty banners grew beyond 280 and took over one of the museum’s largest spaces.

Some banners also carried relationships from earlier work into the project. One flag was contributed by an artist I had previously worked with through Project Art Works. That mattered because the installation was not only gathering new participants. It was also bringing existing creative relationships into a new shared public space, alongside contributions from groups and people I had met through the Turner Prize work.

Joining, Curating & Installing At Scale

Before the banners could go up, many had to be joined into larger sequences. I did part of that work live in the Herbert with a group of volunteers, setting up a working area where visitors could stop, watch, ask questions and join in if they wanted to. The making therefore did not end when a banner was handed in. Bringing hundreds of separate contributions together became another public part of the project.

Working with a volunteer, I curated the banners into subject groups so pieces concerned with related ideas could be read together without losing the individuality of each maker. One volunteer with architectural experience also helped with measurements and planning. The installation itself then became a substantial piece of work. I developed plans for how those groups could occupy the Covered Court and the curatorial team had to approve the arrangement because the banners passed over and around significant works already in the space, including the Jacquard loom and a large painting.

I installed the work with a professional technician and volunteers. Reaching the upper levels required lifting equipment, and the scale brought risk assessment, access and timing into the job. Some installation happened while the Herbert was open, so Front of House staff were involved in managing the live gallery environment and checking the developing installation for health and safety, clear routes and the museum’s sensors and alarms. This was the first time I had installed something of this scale inside a major institution, and it stretched community engagement into curation, technical planning and exhibition delivery.

The finished scale is difficult to understand from a single photograph. The Herbert’s official Coventry Banner drone film gives a much clearer sense of the installation filling the height and breadth of the Covered Court. I later returned to this experience when writing about curation and exhibition management and what I had learned by working behind the scenes at the Herbert.

A Launch Designed With Communities

The opening on 13 May 2022 was deliberately not treated like a formal private view. It became the Coventry Banner Project: Social Picnic Launch Day, a free drop in event where people were invited to bring a picnic, sit down and spend time together. I had kept participating groups involved in conversations about the launch, and the details reflected that community approach: shared tea sets, a parklet, mats and cushions and simple food rather than an exclusive gallery opening. I also deliberately planned it during Mental Health Awareness Week because so many of the banners carried experiences of isolation, recovery, care and being heard.

The day held difficult stories as well as celebration. People who were still shielding were represented through video, including the story of one participant who directed another person’s hand through a video call when they could no longer physically paint for themselves. Two families also attended whose relatives had made banners but had died before seeing the installation. By then the project had stretched me in almost every direction, but the launch made clear that the banners were not anonymous objects. Each one had a person, relationship or piece of lived experience behind it.

Public Events & Audience Response

The public programme continued after the launch. I delivered further activity around the installation, including making and stitching sessions and The Stories Behind The Coventry Banner on 19 August, where visitors could hear some of the stories and passions behind individual works while moving through the Covered Court.

The Stories Behind The Coventry Banner also brought some of those relationships back into the gallery in person. Contributors returned to talk about what their banners meant, including Martina from Walking Forest and a leader from the Men’s Shed. The Men’s Shed relationship had begun when I first took the group around Turner Prize 2021. It continued through making for The Coventry Banner and then into Divided Selves, where I worked with them again through flags, identity and collective voice. That continuity matters in my practice because relationships can carry from one project into the next rather than starting again from zero each time.

I also wanted visitors to answer the work rather than only look at it. Using fabric left from the project, I invited people to make small banners with felt tip pens and Blu Tack them to the wall. The mini banners built into a substantial body of audience feedback across the exhibition, and any single photograph only shows a fraction of what accumulated. Visitors recorded reactions, messages, memories and calls for the work to be preserved, using the same simple banner language as the main installation. Evaluation therefore became another participatory layer of the project rather than a separate form at the end. Interest in the individual stories grew strongly enough that the Herbert later invited makers to submit the stories behind their banners, with the intention of creating an ebook from people’s processes, memories and hopes.

Legacy, Collection & Permanent Home

By the time the installation came down, the banners had become a record of Coventry at a particular moment. They carried hundreds of people’s concerns, identities, humour, politics, experiences of the pandemic and hopes for what might change. The Herbert described the project as a reflection of living social history, and I did not want that collective record simply to disappear once the temporary exhibition ended.

The banners did not all follow the same route afterwards. Some were retained by the Herbert, including banners about Coventry’s ring road that had been contributed by Martina from Walking Forest. Other pieces were photographed and recorded. For the wider body of work, I actively looked for somewhere it could remain together and worked with Coventry Central Hall, a Methodist venue, to find a permanent home. Keeping the collection together mattered because the artwork had become an archive made by the people who lived here, not just a temporary museum display.

The legacy did not stop with finding another building. By November 2022, CV Life was recording a new display being developed at Central Methodist Hall, with Foleshill Creates helping to sew the banners into arrangements for the new space through Chit Chat and Craft sessions. The redisplay was planned to launch on 8 March 2023 for International Women’s Day. The material therefore kept moving through community hands after it left the Herbert rather than disappearing into storage.

Research, Recognition & A Longer Thread

The project later became the subject of published research. Dr Rachel Marsden’s article in Social Works? Journal of Social Art Practice identifies me as the project instigator and examines the Banner through social prescribing, inclusion and community wellbeing. The University of Birmingham later used it as a case study in co-production at the Herbert, tracing how relationships and learning from the project continued into later work. The Coventry Banner was later a finalist for the Innovation in Culture Award at the Coventry and Warwickshire Live Business Awards 2022, where the project finished runner up.

That recognition was separate from a more personal one that grew directly from the community relationships around this work. Grapevine later nominated me as an individual for the Community Champion (Individual) Award in the 2023 Cov Cares Awards, recognising the reach I had built across Coventry communities through The Coventry Banner and the wider engagement around the Herbert. I want to keep those two awards distinct: the Coventry Banner was recognised as a project, while the Grapevine nomination recognised my individual community practice and reach.

The donated PROCESSIONS fabric was not simply a workaround for a missing budget. It became one of the clearest early examples of the reuse and recycle philosophy developing through my practice. With no conventional materials budget, asking, sharing, adapting and repurposing were built into the project from the beginning. The sash fabric already carried the history of another mass participation artwork, and using it again allowed that material history to continue rather than starting with newly bought cloth. That resourcefulness became increasingly deliberate and now sits within the sustainability approach described in my manifesto.

Related Work

The Banner sits between several projects in this archive. It grew from my Turner Prize 2021 community engagement, was tested through the King Edward VI College residency, carried environmental connections from Walking Forest and later fed into Divided Selves, where questions of identity, flags and collective voice developed again within a different framework.