Take Thick with The Light: Stitching Together the Stopher Story

'Take Thick with the Light - Stitching the Stopher Story, Suffolk and World War One' is a project that examines the connection between heritage, art and well-being through a collection of letters written by two brothers, George and Albert Stopher from the village of Sweffling in Suffolk. Both young men were killed on the Western Front within a few weeks of each other, in the spring of 1917. However, the men’s voices can still be heard through the extensive collection of letters that they left behind, which charts the relationships between the brothers, their parents and their sweethearts. Now held at the Suffolk Records Office, the letters tell the more unusual story of the rural citizen soldier, unlike most collections of soldiers' letters which tend to be from men from towns and cities. Prior to February 1916, only about eight percent of the army’s recruits were from agricultural occupations. The correspondence therefore provided insight into the experiences of these two men as they lived through the conflict, and how the connection to family and place played a role in their mental and emotional well-being. Connecting our story to the Stopher family's story, our project is linked specifically to the ‘Five Ways to Wellbeing', designed to help us to take care of our own mental and emotional well-being. Six of our project participants have taken in a series of creative workshops, introducing them to the letters and supporting them to make their own creative response, via research into the letters and exploring the use of textiles, in order to produce a series of stitched pieces of the surrounding Suffolk landscape where the Stopher family lived. These stitched portraits of the Stopher family form a creative response to the Stopher collections, which together with the written accounts about the family, will form a resource for delivering a series of workshops and exhibitions. The portraits also offered a different perspective on the Stopher family, through the use of embroidery as a therapy for soldiers wounded during the First World War. Many of the hospitals tending the wounded both during and after the conflict provided bright, clean, quiet environments where the men could perform meditative, transformative work essential to their rehabilitation from their physical and mental wounds - one such activity was embroidery, also known as “fancy work”. The legacy of our project, and the creative responses produced, will therefore tell a story about an ordinary Suffolk family during World War One, as well as highlighting ways in which participation in arts and heritage projects can have a positive effect on our mental well-being,