Hope dress at the Blackpool resilience conference 2022

Have you ever been to Blackpool? This was my first time, I didn’t know what to expect. As I drove along the promenade looking out for my Hotel I was mesmerised by the shiny lights and so many hotels. Blackpool is apparently the Vegas of England with its nightclubs, bars and good restaurants, I could see how it got its name arriving at night with the many glamorous punters hitting the night clubs.

So what was I doing in Blackpool you may ask? I had been invited to show my dress, Hope - weaving communities together at the Resilience Revolution forum at the newly revamped Winter Gardens Conference centre, as the name suggests, smack bang in the middle of Blackpool. Apparently Boris Johnson and his cronies were using the same room for the conservative conference a week before! Nothing could have been more different with our conference, the Resilience Revolution with aims of providing a resilience-promoting environment for all 10-16 year olds offering programmes to every young person in year five by embedding the Academic Resilience Approach, which is a whole-school approach, in Blackpool's schools.

I arrived with my giant dress to a sparkling new conference hall and a great team awaiting to help rig it up with cherry picker at the ready! It was quite a moment seeing the dress being hauled up to its full glory. The dress measures 12ft tall so it was lifted about 3 feet off the ground. The responses from the team was heart warming and worth the 6 hour drive straight after teaching a full day of textiles.

I suddenly realised that all the other exhibitors had a lot of merchandise and ways to engage the conference participants. How was I going to engage the audience? The dress was a bold and powerful statement and a great talking point, but I realised something was missing. My go to place when I need guidance is my Higher Power. I made a prayer and a message came through loud and clear, get some string and invite visitors to weave mini looms. I found string but no mini looms so decided to string the exhibition table instead. I’m a great believer of utilising whatever you have to hand. So with a ball of string and a pad of paper I managed to rig up an inclusive arts activity which really worked. With signs and instructions that said, ‘Do you want to work with me?’ ‘What are your hopes and dreams for Blackpool?’ ‘Have your say’ and ‘Write your hopes and dreams onto strips of paper and weave them together’

I can’t begin to tell you how brilliant this idea was, if I say so myself! The amount of people that gathered around my table and started writing their hopes and dreams onto the strips of paper was immense. Teachers responded with proposals for workshops and the conversations I had with conference participants was so nourishing and worth every ounce of effort getting my work up their.

I have never come across a more friendly and inviting people than the people of Blackpool. And the children, what can I say, inquisitive, polite and generous. A lot of the young people who were attending the conference were in care so had difficult stories but you would not have known that about them. What I saw was courageous young people who were strong and confident and were being given agency by the schools and systems connected to the Resilience Revolution and that was clearly having a very positive effect on them.

Bringing the hope dress to the Resilience Revolution in Blackpool was a joy and the crowning glory was when one school arrived at my table with their teacher out in front who introduced her youngest pupil. The teacher exclaimed that the little girl had drawn a picture of the Hope dress and she wanted to show me. I asked her what she liked about the dress and she said, ‘It looks like an angel’. My happiness was complete.