Since the launch of the government's Literacy strategy the demand for creative projects that stimulate literacy learning has increased. This has provided the opurtunity for COG to develop further collaborations with writers and poets and led to the developoment of a series of different 'Banner Book' initiatives.

COG have been exploring different ways of transferring words onto textiles as well as a range of new exciting ideas for fabric book construction. Outcomes have included works in the form of scrolls, folding books that open out to create long freeze-like banners and large hangings.

Partnerships with writers and poets have involved different approaches to how words and visual images combine. Some projects have taken the words themselves as the stimulus for images - their sound and meaning determining shapes and forms - and other collaborations have involved the writing developing out of the images created.

Cloth of Gold have recently completed two projects with the Tate Gallery Education Department:

Constructing Identities (detail from banner-book)

Tony, with the poet Margot Henderson, worked at two primary schools in Tower Hamlets on a Tate Gallery Education Department Project centered around the John Sargent exhibition. There was an exhibition of the finished work over the summer months (1999) in the Tate Gallery (Education Department's display area).

Turner on the Seine Schools Project

Inspired by the Turner on the Seine exhibition, primary school children from St. Andrews Primary School, Stockwell and Stanhope Primary School, Greenford worked with Tony and writer/director Olusola Oyeleye to create banners, paintings and poems. This project, linking art and literacy, was funded by Glaxo Wellcome and was displayed at the Tate Gallery in September 1999. The Turner on Seine project pages show further details.