Oliver Bliss: Lesbian Immigration Support Group- banner Making workshop at LGF

Over the weekend I was making a banner for this year’s pride with the Lesbian Immigration Support Group (LISG).

What a wonderful collective of vibrant women! They were all really welcoming and fun to be with.

We all forged together to generate some really interesting ideas about what they wanted to appear on the banner itself.

We knew just two things, it needed to have the words ‘Lesbian Immigration Support Group’ and their logo on it.

The rest however was up to the group themselves to create and we only had the LGF room hired for five hours!

So we started with a quick brain storm to work out what LISG meant to them individually, this was quite emotional, the group really does provide a life line of support and hope for the group.

Through our discussions, they each came up with symbols to represent the words they had come up with. For family two people kissing or two female symbols together, a lion for strength, birds and butterflies for freedom etc.

In the end it was decided that the best symbol was a tree as it represented several things to them. A tree is a grounding and stable structure, which has the ability to grow and flourish. The materials of the tree itself represent the diversity of what it is go be a woman, beautiful, elegant, strong, robust and unique.

The group said that they felt that before they had found LISG they had no future or hope and with LISG they had the chance to imagine their own tomorrow for the first time.

So we set to work cutting out letters and making birds and butterflies to go in the tree. It took us the whole session to draw and cut everything out that we wanted and now with just a week left the banner need’s physically sewing together! I’ve given you a little preview below but you’ll have to wait and see how it turns out!