Pocket Parade

30th September 2026 in Bermondsey
Booking via www.illuminated-arts.com

Welcome – Illuminated Arts – Melissa Jo Smith

Designers:

Diane Goldie

Christopher Holland-Brandt

Reuben Harris

Musical interlude

Carol Tong

Wall & Jones

Thierry Alexandre

Between each designer collection, community participants will parade the pockets they have made in Illuminated Arts Community workshops and masterclasses.

We are delighted to welcome you to our joyful celebration of creativity, memory, heritage and community.

The culmination of our Stitching Communities Together project, our Pocket Parade brings together people living with dementia and memory loss, community participants, artists and emerging fashion designers. Inspired by the historic tie-on pockets once worn by women, participants have created their own hand-stitched pockets using fabric, colour and imagery to tell the stories of their lives and preserve their memories and identities.

These unique pockets will take centre stage alongside contemporary fashion collections, including designs inspired by stories and artworks from Royal Museums Greenwich. The result is a vibrant intergenerational fashion parade that challenges our perceptions of ageing and dementia, celebrates the richness of lived experience, and gives participants the opportunity to become not simply audiences or recipients of care but artists, collaborators and the stars of the show.

The Pocket Parade is a celebration of the stories that make us and the connections we forge when we share them.

As part of Stitching Communities Together we invited our designers to step out of the studio and work directly with the communities at the heart of the project, visiting dementia support groups, care homes and the social club we run for older people in Bermondsey. These workshops created a genuine intergenerational exchange, bringing younger creatives together with older people to share skills, stories and ideas. Rather than simply designing for our participants, the designers worked with them, listening to their experiences and allowing their memories, personalities and creativity to influence the work.

The workshops offered a deeper opportunity to really see one another, to understand the realities of living with dementia, the experiences of those who care for someone with dementia, and the creativity, humour, knowledge and individuality that can so easily be overlooked. Together, they transformed these encounters into something beautiful and spectacular, demonstrating what can happen when we bring generations together as equals, with creativity as the meeting point.

My wearable art practice explores identity, memory, and the stories held within the body and the clothes we wear. I am interested in how garments can carry traces of a life lived, becoming vessels for personal history, connection, and self-expression.

Created for Pocket Parade at Queen’s House, Greenwich, on the theme ‘Audacious Humans’, the work responds to the tradition of tie-on pockets, everyday objects that once held the small but significant items people carried through their lives. Shown alongside pockets made by community participants, the work reflects on what we choose to keep, what we lose, and the memories that remain.

The garments will be modelled by community members who have taken part in the project. Their presence is not separate from the work but integral to it. Each person brings their own history, character, and experience, challenging assumptions about visibility, ageing, and who gets to be seen and celebrated.

At its heart, this project is about recognising the value of lived experience. It offers a space where memory, creativity, and human connection can be honoured through making, wearing, and sharing stories together.

Chris Holland-Brandt is London based fashion designer making work to expose the absurdities of American pop culture, fashion and the creative world through cartoon chaos, DIY practice and light, youthful degeneracy.

His work often explores transparency through making, insecurities of an artist and world building. Holland-Brandt works using pre-loved material, ethical practices and inclusive design techniques. Making clothes that can be loved, worn and shared by like-minded people for years to come.

He recently graduated from central St Martins MA Fashion programme and is now operating a weekend showroom on the iconic Brick Lane in East London.

Reuben George Harris (b. 2003, Stockton, UK) is an artist & designer currently specialising in fashion design at the University of Westminster. They utilise textiles, fashion design and fine art processes to examine society, identity, and culture in relation to the current day. With joyful provocation at the forefront; Reuben’s work comes from a distinctly British-Indian and queer perspective. They are developing a signature style portraying their own fashion works through fine art mediums – blurring the border between fine art and fashion

Reuben’s recent solo exhibition ‘All That You Have Is Your Soul’ saw a 12 look fashion collection accompanied by corresponding artworks and a fashion film. In 2024 Reuben received a scholarship from British Fashion Council supporting their BA work.

Carol Tong is a Hong Kong fashion designer based in London whose work is driven by a critical engagement with gender, power, and the female experience.

Through her work, Carol aims to challenge conventional ideas of femininity through distortion, deconstruction, and form.

Carol was selected to join the Pocket Parade as her beautiful work resonates so closely with the social history of women’s tie-on pockets, as often the only safe, personal spaces for women in the 18th Century to keep personal and treasured possessions.

Wall and Jones is a platform for designer/makers who work predominantly with recycled clothing or textiles.

For the Pocket Parade, designer Ali Wall collaborates with fabric painter/artist Tony Chircop, costume curator Peter Mulloy and milliner/hair stylist Ana Lazowski.

This is their response to the Jacobean styling of the Queen’s House gallery’s original inhabitants plus the revealed hidden element of women’s pockets from that time until the raw deconstructed present.
Jacobean pocket punk.

Thierry Alexandre (they, them) is a French polymath known for their performance pieces drawing on baroque aesthetics, Butoh philosophy and the natural world. Upcycling, recycling, object trouvé and ethical sourcing are at the core of Thierry’s collection for the Pocket Parade, where the themes of Navigation and Colonisation will be explored through their signature dramatic and performative style.

The theme of pockets will be mirrored through vibrant wearable art pieces that billow and balloon majestically, pouch or pocket like garments responding to the elements, creating unique and environment led moments that reflect the untameable dynamics of memory. Each model will embody specific entities in the navigation and colonisation themes in the form of: the stars, the moon, the sun, the sea and skies, the bloodshed and African power reclaimed.

Illuminated Arts CIC brings communities together through creativity to explore and celebrate shared heritage, uncover hidden histories and unheard stories, and build connection, pride and belonging.

We have over ten years’ experience delivering ambitious, inclusive creative projects and community showcase events, working with volunteers, care homes, schools, artists, charities and community organisations across South-East London. We have a particular track record of using stitch and textile practice to build confidence, connection and wellbeing. Our pocket-making workshops have attracted hundreds of participants, while helping people rediscover forgotten skills, learn new ones and use stitching as a mindful form of self-expression. We are deeply rooted in the local community, with our directors having lived in South-East London for more than 30 years, and are committed to creating opportunities for people who are too often overlooked to participate, contribute and shine.

Illuminated Arts

Melissa Jo Smith
Rebecca Cole-Coker

Show Production Coordinator

Solana Talenti

Co-Producer

Karolina Kai

AV Team Lead

Reuben Carroll-Reid

Volunteer & AV Team Coordinator

Aashika Mamgain

AV Team

Lucas Manning, Liam Massey, Philip Mills, Students & graduates from London College of Communications

Hair Styling Lead

Michael Kent

Make Up Lead

Ana Lazowski

Musicians

Kemi Omoniyi – Violin
Rondell J Gulley – Singer
Catherine & Elizabeth Rahjans – Harps
Gabriella Dal’Olio – Trinity Laban Conservatoire

Illuminated Arts Website Design

Eden Coker

And all our wonderful Volunteers – Thank you!

With many thanks to the Queen’s House Team

Elma Curran, Charlotte Paddock, Nick Babbs & Jean-Marie Tucker

Daffodils Dementia Support Group – Southwark

Greenwich Memorial Hospital Memory Care Service (CGTS) – Greenwich

Greenwich Carers – Greenwich

Limetree Care Home – Southwark

Magnolia Dementia Support Group – Lambeth/Southwark

Salter Social Club – Southwark

Tower Bridge Care Home – Southwark

Venner Road Dementia Support Group – Lewisham

Blackheath Embroiderers Group – Greenwich/Lewisham

Before the mid-19th century, women’s pockets were not sewn into clothing but tied around the waist and hidden beneath layers of skirts.

Accessed through discreet slits, these pockets held personal treasures: coins, letters, sewing kits, spectacles, and keepsakes. Though concealed from view, they offered one of the few spaces where women could carry and control their possessions. By the time of the Suffragette movement, sewn-on pockets became a political symbol, representing women’s growing independence and right to ownership.

Explore this legacy at an Illuminated Arts Masterclass workshop while designing and hand-stitching your pocket with vintage textiles, threads, beads, and trims.

booking links via: www.illuminated-arts.com

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