The Littleport Button Tree project
The Field Theatre Group's Littleport Button Tree was a unique community memory gathering project. The project was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and selected as one of three featured heritage projects for Cambridgeshire in 2018. The Button Tree exhibition formed part of the 2018 Isle of Ely Arts Festival.
Over the course of ten community workshops in the Adams Heritage Centre in Littleport, our project team and volunteers created a large-scale community memory gallery, in the form of a ‘Button Tree.’
Members of the community were invited to bring their buttons along to be incorporated into our tree.
We were also able to scan photographs onto fabric and incorporate them into this textile work, to form a truly memorable community memory gallery.
Talented textile creator Fiona Lidgey Robinson created the button tree with community artists Jennifer Stevens and Sukie Hoyle.
Click here to see some of the beautiful images from our Button Tree book!
‘It was a great privilege to work with members of the public on this project. We have gathered some wonderful anecdotes, memories and family stories. Many of these are extraordinary stories of ordinary people.
Some were simply ‘doing their bit’ in wartime, others coping with times of loss and bereavement, homelessness, or simply getting on with the business of family life.
There also are stories of the institutions which have shaped life in Littleport. Including the Hope Brothers shirt factory (later Burberry).
These stories form a snapshot of ordinary life in a Fenland community. But more than that, they show how the threads of family and community life are woven through the generations. Those threads are as strong and enduring as ever, here in Littleport.’
Deborah Curtis
The Button Tree book is available to buy for £5.
Deborah Curtis collated and edited our Button Tree stories for inclusion in an accompanying book.
