Arts, crafts and a community quilt – all for Warm Homes

As part of the United for Warm Homes campaign the group were keen to highlight the need to support vulnerable people with their energy bills, to rapidly insulate our heat-leaking homes and to scaleup on low-cost renewables for our energy needs.

An arts and crafts campaign event was organised in Chapter where people were invited to contribute their message to a patch of cloth. These patches will be joined together to make a community quilt with all our calls for Warm Homes.

Catherine Hughes from Cardiff Friends of the Earth said, “It was a great event with lots of creativity and discussions about energy and Warm Homes. We made several patches on the day with many more being sent in by crafters taking part from home.

Back in April we worked with communities in Grangetown to show just how much heat they were losing from their homes. This next action calls for government help to tackle this waste of energy and money.

It worries us that we will be heading into another challenging winter with so many people living in cold homes.”

Working with the community

Cardiff Friends of the Earth advertised the action widely on its social media channels. Printed posters and leaflets were also put up around town inviting people to take part.

Community member Rosie Spears who joined in on the day said, “It was such an imaginative way to talk about such an important issue. People need help with the cost of living crisis and their energy bills and this campaign is such a logical solution. Governments need to act now.

This actions was a fun way to call for that. Being crafty and creative meant people could take part from home and still be involved.”

The quilt, which is now around 40 patches, includes messages such as ‘Insulate now’, ‘Warm Homes 4 All’, ‘Keep it Green’ amongst many more.

Earlier that morning the group joined Climate Cymru outside the Senedd building for the Warm This Winter campaign. This campaign is also supported by Friends of the Earth, alongside Size of Wales, WWF, Oxfam and more. 

What next?

The group is pleased to have so many contributions towards the community quilt and will use it in future actions on this campaign.

Catherine is very positive, “We might take it to Parliament to show to our MPs or we might turn it into a banner. The point is that these are people’s voices calling for action for warm homes. Our elected politicians should take notice.”