Threads of Memory

Threads of Memory is an intimate creative workshop led by Malak Elghuel, an interdisciplinary artist and an integrative therapist, inviting SWANA women from London’s diasporic communities to gather, reflect, and create from their personal and inherited memories.

Centring textile-making as a gentle form of storytelling and cultural archiving, the session invites participants to explore how memory is held in fabric in the textures of domestic cloth, family garments, inherited patterns, or everyday rituals of care.

Through writing, conversation, and hands-on making with yarn and fabric, participants will create personal textile “memory maps” that visually trace belonging, ancestry, and emotional connection. This workshop offers a space for shared reflection honouring how memory lives in the body, and how making together can preserve what is often unspoken.

Participants are invited to bring a piece of fabric, garment or textile that holds personal or family meaning or any small object that carries memory. You can also bring a scent, colour, or symbol from home (if comfortable) to inform your creative process.

Organised in partnership with The Showroom, this workshop is part of Shubbak's Voices of Resilience series - a project documenting Arab & SWANA cultural memory in London. The creative pieces and maps produced through the workshop will be exhibited as part of the final showcase at Brent Museum & Archives in Spring 2026. With permission from the participants, their work will also be included in the museum’s archives collection.