May – July 2018 – Weaving stories of donated fabric and clothing by residents of Sengkang Central area took place at a fence in the basketball court of Sengkang Community Centre this year from May – July as part of the nation-wide celebrations of PassionArts Festival.

ArtStories artist, Jacquelyn Soo had the idea to recycle donated clothing and fabric to create a large-scale weaving installation where anyone could easily contribute to the artwork by simply weaving in and out onto the fence facing a busy road stretch in Sengkang Central.

The completion took about two months of planning, preparations and treatment of the clothing to actual weaving of the artwork. The first steps was getting people to donate their unwanted clothing to the CC and the second step was sorting the many bags of clothing into different colours and shades before cutting them strips to prepare them for weaving.

Students from nearby Secondary School and their teachers came to help, volunteers from the various Resident Centres and main Community Centre came to help us with this huge task of stripping and cutting, tearing and sorting, weaving and tying.

Despite the unpredictable weather, the team was able to continue their work with some interruptions of light rain and wet weather. Many passerbys who walked past would stop to ask us questions and comment that the installation was both beautiful and creative, something that they could not have thought of and that it was a welcoming artwork in their neighbourhood.

On the day of Sengkang’s CC PassionArt Festival opening, the artwork was warmly appreciated by all the committee members and Guest of Honour. The artwork, ‘A Sunshine of Hope’, inspired hope and dreams amongst the community to continue to create and serve their people.

Here are photos of the work-in-progress and completed artwork! Many thanks to Shaf, Kaehana, Felicia, Malcolm and Vanessa for actively working on this installation.