TAVISTOCK residents with mental health difficulties created a unique blast from the past for the town’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.

People from Tavistock Memory Cafe and local mental health charity Make a Difference used technology well past its sell-by date to make art flags evoking memories of years gone by, as well as offering hope for the future.

The art flags were displayed in the Guildhall during the celebrations, with their efforts attracting a lot of interest.

Town councillor Ursula Mann, one of the project’s coordinators, who helped get funding for the scheme, said it provided people who might not have felt able to take part in the Jubilee celebrations to get involved.

She said: ‘It was really very interesting. If you look closely at the flags, you can see messages from people who remember Jubilees in their youth and memories of being young.’

The memory café and Make a Difference have been working with textile artists Just Sewn Stories and Melinda Schwakhofer.

During four weeks in May, participants from Make a Difference designed and created textile flags that took them back to their childhood or teenage years, celebrating the early decades of the Queen’s reign, or forward to the future, voicing their hopes and dreams for humanity and the planet.

Artistic skills relating to pattern and colour selection were refined, and textile techniques, including appliqué and printing were explored.

Visitors and volunteers at Tavistock Memory Café were invited to type past recollections and future thoughts onto fabric pages, using manual typewriters dating from the 1950s and ‘60s.

The group at Make a Difference completed more flags that incorporated the Memory Cafe’s typed messages into the designs. Constructing the flags involved learning early 20th century hand-cranked sewing machines, as well as hand-stitching skills.

The weekly sessions held at Make a Difference’s new home at The Arches were full of vibrant creativity, concentration, co-operation and conversation, said Cllr Mann.

She said during the first day of the exhibition, 90 people had visited the Guildhall to look at the display by 1pm.

Cllr Mann added that Just Sewn Stories had ‘involved two groups of individuals who are often isolated from community involvement due to the challenges presented by their health conditions.

‘This was a wonderful way to allow individuals with dementia and their carers and individuals with mental health struggles to be included in the town’s Jubilee Gala Day celebration. I know that as a result of the success of the project Make a Difference are hoping to work to run another series of workshops with Just Sewn Stories because the participants found them so positive.’