The Armley Horses

We were invited to collaborate on a project with Assembly House, Leeds, who were working with Leeds 2023 and their Letting Culture Loose campaign! Leeds 2023 will be a year-long celebration of culture, where everyone across the city will be invited to create, make, perform, run, bake, eat, share, sing, speak, play and more!

Artists Amelia Wood and Rosie Vohra from Assembly house reached out to us for help in creating a wonderful public artwork to celebrate the textile history of Armley and it’s rich industrial heritage.

A close up of the pieces made by Hookers and Clickers

Assembly House sent us out inspiration packs with colours, images, collages and a poem to help us create 75+ different pieces, which were put together as a patchwork onto these amazing horses built by the artists! Rosie and Amelia encouraged us to be as creative as possible, and so they had to idea what all of the final pieces would look like until they arrived… The finished horses were installed in Armley Park on the 25th May 2022 for two weeks – and they looked FANTASTIC!!

You can find out more about this unique collaboration here, and see our Boss Lady meeting with the artists at Assembly House behind the scenes. You can also explore Leeds’ rich textile history at the nearby Leeds Industrial Museum, and take a walk along the beautiful Leeds-Liverpool canal where horses would have been working pulling the barges to and from factories throughout the city.

View along the Leeds-Liverpool canal

A Royal Collaboration

Kipbag are a charity based in Staffordshire and support some of the most vulnerable people in our communities. KipBags are a packs of essential items designed to keep the homeless warm, clean and restore some of their dignity. Our recent collaboration with them turned into something quite unexpected…

We started working with Kipbag in late 2019, making scarves, hats and hand warmers to include in their bags as well as sending toiletries, socks, sleeping bags, first aids kits, and anything else that would help to bring someone a little warmth and comfort.

We knitted and crocheted away making as much as we possibly could in the hope that each item would make a small difference to someone in need. Little did we know that we were also contributing to something even bigger than we had initially imagined… Kipbag were working in partnership with Sarah’s Trust – a charitable initiative founded by the Duchess of York – to distribute these essential kits throughout the country!

500 Kipbags were made in total!

We were so proud to be a part of this incredible project and to contribute to the essential work that Kipbag have been continuing to do, even throughout the Covid-19 crisis, distributing bags across the UK.

Find out more about all of the work done by everyone involved in this campaign and please support them if you can!