A special exhibition created in loving memory from people bereaved by suicide is now open at Gallery Oldham as part of this year’s Month of Hope campaign.
Titled ‘Speak Their Name’, the display features Greater Manchester’s Suicide Memorial Quilt, a unique piece of art made up of 54 individual squares.
Within each square, a different story is shared by friends and family members of people they know who have taken their own lives and the loss that is felt in their absence.
Councillor Barbara Brownridge, Cabinet Member for Adults, Health and Wellbeing, said: “This is a very powerful and emotive display, that intimately shares with us the stories of people we have lost to suicide.
“It highlights how suicide can happen to anyone and the devastation it leaves to our family and friends in its wake.
“It could be your child, your twin sibling, a best friend, a work colleague, your parents or grandparents, anyone can find themselves in a place where they feel their only way out is to take their own life.
“That’s why it’s so important we talk more openly about our wellbeing to ensure we get support when we need it the most, and I hope by seeing this exhibition our residents feel they can have those conversations.”
Quilting has a long history of memorialising people and events. In the 19th Century, signature quilts featuring people's names and messages were often created to mark major events or given as keepsakes. In more recent decades, the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt was one of several global quilts created in the 1980s and 90s to honour loved ones lost to HIV/AIDS, serving as a powerful symbol of remembrance and a call for change.
This quilt, which was first unveiled at the Manchester Art Gallery in 2020, aims to raise awareness of the impact losing a loved one to suicide has.
Rebecca Jackson, a fibre artist and mum bereaved by suicide, was commissioned by Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership to run the 'Speak Their Name' project.
Speaking about the quilt, Rebecca added: “We want to tell the individual stories of those we have lost to suicide, to show the outside world that these are not numbers, they are human lives and real people left behind.
“We hope that ‘Speak Their Name’ will help raise awareness of the impact that losing a loved one to suicide has and to be part of Greater Manchester’s history.”
Thousands of people take their own lives every year, while many more attempt to end their life or are struggling with harmful thoughts.
One of the biggest ways we can help to save people’s lives though, is by talking honestly about suicide and discussing the problems we face more openly before we feel it it becomes too late.
Greater Manchester’s Month of Hope, now in its fifth year, helps address these solutions by encouraging local people to play a more active role in preventing suicide through dedicated activities and events, like this exhibition, across the city region.
‘Speak Their Name’ runs until Wednesday 9 October at Gallery Oldham, with residents able to visit Tuesday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm. Admission is free.
For more information about the Month of Hope, please visit www.oldham.gov.uk/MonthOfHope.