www.coatofhopes.uk

Please note: The creation and ongoing work of the Coat of Hopes had been underway now since Spring 2021. As such, most of the money raised here has already been spent! No person has been paid at any time to create this work, it is made of and from endless love and commitment. However, there have been many unavoidable costs - website, materials, printing, postage, travel, a bag to carry and keep safe the Coat, a poncho to keep it dry walking in the rain... As the Coat's journey continues we also continue to encounter these costs, as well as the desire to make walking with the Coat accessible to everyone, which means sometimes subsidising basic food (and occasionally travel )costs for those who want to commit to walking with and sharing the Coat of Hopes. By contributing financially you will always be a part of this story too. Thank you, thank you...

Sometimes it's hard to know what to do. It's hard to know how to raise your voice, for a world in which each of us feels we have a place and a purpose; a world where every creature and element is considered; a world with a future...

 

How can we tell a different story to the one that stands? How can we live a story that tells the change we long to see?

 

The answer that came was a patchwork coat...

The Coat of Hopes is a precious and beautiful patchwork coat, made, worn and walked by hundreds of people from across the UK to carry their griefs, remembrances, prayers and hopes for their local landscapes in the face of climate breakdown to world leaders meeting at the United Nations Climate Summit (COP 26). On 30th October 2021, the Coat of Hopes arrived in Glasgow having been created on a 9 week, 900km pilgrimage on foot from the south coast of England. Each day of the COP26 conference the Coat made its way to the gates of the Blue Zone to declare its invitation to all delegates present to wear the Coat and feel the warmth and the weight of our hopes, and as an act of communion with all those who had made and worn it on its way. But COP26 did not deliver - even - the pledges required to maintain a liveable planet for the current human and animal populations.

What became clear at the end of that journey was the importance of every person realising their crucial significance in making the changes required to ensure a safe future for all life. So the Coat begins its next chapter…

So, here’s the story of the Coat so far: In its first chapter, it was dreamt, and created on the walk to Glasgow. In the second chapter, the Coat spent a year visiting communities around Britain by invitation, travelling mainly by train. What emerged during that period was that the Coat’s natural mode of travel is to walk. So now, it returns to the life of a troubadour pilgrim, heading down the East side of the country having walked up the West. And a new chapter lies open before us, waiting to be written.

In July, the Coat will start this new chapter with a walk from where the gates to the Blue Zone stood, to Edinburgh where it will take its place in an exhibition at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral during the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

It is this journey that will launch the Coat of Hopes on its onward travels through the land. And, as such, it is an invitation for all to experience, wear, and sing with the Coat. As well as a space for people to explore the possibility of becoming, and to develop their way of being a Coat Guardian themselves as the Coat travels on indefinitely.

This whole journey, from Glasgow to Edinburgh and then from Edinburgh onward to York, the next chapter of the Coat’s life, will only be made possible by the willingness of many new pilgrims to walk with and share the Coat.

If you would like to join us - either as a pilgrim accompanying and supporting the Coat on its walk or as a Coat Guardian responsible for sharing the Coat and its work - please email [email redacted] with your contact details and we will register your interest.

“I want to make you a coat.

A coat to warm you. To warm you; with a sense of what to do, and of being a part of the story, with the knowledge that you are not alone, alone; a coat that will not be still, a coat to carry your voice and to comfort your uncertainty. A comforter, a carrier of sorrows, remembrances and a carrier of hopes. Stitched from the ragged past into a gentle armour against a sharp future. So you can wear the promise that we all belong together.”*

This is the Coat that we have made.

This is the Coat that we must invite everyone to wear...

“But I can't.

I can't do this alone.”*

*Words from the original Coat of Hopes "Invitation"

 

www.coatofhopes.uk