Hoist your vision people
Most people understand the power and strength of a flag. When it comes to a symbol, nothing can be more powerful. Flags can inspire love, rage, war, hate, pride, revolution and knowledge. Flags are designed at the most simple level, to communicate a message or an idea with a quick glance.
Flags are used as a way of communicating and rallying, remembering and honouring.
And flags have a wonderful crafty history.
Often when you learn about a flag, in particular a flag representing a nation, you learn about what the design means. But often the story behind the flags creation is forgotten. A classic example of this is the Eureka Flag. This flag is an exceptionally powerful symbol in Australian culture. And despite being over 100 years old, still fires enormous passion and dedication to the cause of working people.
And it was made by three women.
In 1854 Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Anastasia Hayes were delivered a design of a flag to be made for an upcoming rally. As observed by Val D’Angri who conserved the flag for the Ballarat Fine Art Gallery:
“It must be realised that the Eureka Flag would have been made in haste, in adverse conditions, and with inadequate materials and equipment. As a consequence, the flag is quite irregular in outline and dimensions, but the workmanship executed by the seamstresses who sewed the flag under those conditions is magnificent.”
I want to acknowledge that this flag has had a troublesome past, and the racist associations with the flags history are shameful. I don’t think that history is cause to dismiss this flag, but it needs to be acknowledged.
Of course it has taken a long time for the role of the women sewers in this story to be recognised.
Another flag however has not only a much more revolutionary purpose but the woman who created it is well remembered.
You may have noticed on the DIY Page that the first image is a flag
This is the Bulgarian April Uprising Flag made by Rayna Knyaginya. The text on the flag translates to ‘Freedom or Death’. Nice sentiment, I can agree with that! And Rayna Knyaginya has an amazing story of struggle as well as creating such an important part of Bulgarian cultural history. I think it’s particularly awesome that after the state failed to crush her she went on to be a maternity nurse!
I also want to draw your attention to a more modern flag. The Tino Rangatiratanga flag aka the Maori Sovereignty Flag hasn’t been around too long but has had an incredible history so far. Check out this great piece on the origins and some of the recent controversies surrounding the Te Haki as told by Native Affairs on Maori TV.
So the point of all this story is to draw your attention to a little initiative the wonderful people at Adbusters have started.
We invite you to create a flag – free from language and well-worn clichés – that embodies the idea of global citizenship
Go read all the details and find out about why they’re doing it and why you should get involved.
While I’m not a fan of the whole One Flag title, it sounds a bit U2ish to me, I think it’s going to be interesting to see what comes out of it. And I reckon we need a whole rash of crafty entries. We should take this opportunity to reconnect with our crafty flag roots.
And I reckon we should actually make them. Adbusters has got this whole digicentric entry criteria which I think needs to be challenged. In fact, I’m going to. I’ve got a vision for this flag thing. And if I can get my shit together to make it. I’m gonna make it IN REAL LIFE. ‘Cause you can’t tell if a flag is any good or not until it’s fluttering!