The Loving Earth Project
The Loving Earth Project is a community textile project that aims to help people engage with the environmental crisis without being overwhelmed. Love can inspire and empower us to take action, and hundreds of people have made textile art panels in a variety of styles and materials (mainly scraps or re-used) to illustrate things, places or people that they love and actions they are taking to help.
The Loving Earth Project website introduces the project , including a gallery resources to enable individuals or groups to make panels or set host events, and information about past exhibitions and events of exhibition. Current events are advertised on the QAN website .
The project was started in 2019 for an exhibition of art by Quakers at Swarthmoor Hall. During 2020/2021, Quaker Arts Network worked in partnership with Woodbrooke to develop the project, and since 2021 groups of panels have been exhibited in a wide variety of places around the UK and abroad, with support from other groups. Over 500 textile art panels have been created so far, and most can be seen online. Owing to popular demand, the project is continuing beyond the expected end date of 2023. If you are interested in hosting an exhibition locally, please take a look at the guidance on our website and get in touch with the Steering Group.
QAN has published some lovely small books based around the project, including a poetry book, and these illustrate some of its diverse and beautiful panels . You can see them here, and can buy them from the Quaker Bookshop. A 2025 calendar is also being prepared.