Red Cloud Project 🩸☁️

Chat and Patch: An interactive quilt co-designed by our workshop participants as they answer the question “How do you say the word ‘periods‘ in your language?”

We delivered two core workshops, one in London and one in Sheffield, titled “Periods in Your Language”. Each 1.5–2 hour session brought together 16 participants to reflect on how periods were spoken about in their families, languages, and cultures. Through group discussions and typography-based design exercises, each participant created a quilt square visualising the word “period” (or its euphemisms) in their language, alongside an audio recording explaining its context, pronunciation, and cultural history.

Following the workshops, we produced a short documentary film “Chat and Patch: How do you say ‘periods’ in your language? ” that captured the process, featuring behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and soundbites from participants and collaborators. The film served as both a creative output and a reflective tool for advocacy and education.

The final artwork of this project is a collaboratively stitched, interactive quilt bringing together the individual words by our participants. Each panel is wired and setup with a custom PCB board (designed by Physical Computing & Prototype Consultant, Ricarnaye Nelson) with capacitive touch technology, allowing viewers to touch the fabric and hear the associated audio—bringing language, sound, and memory together in a tactile, immersive experience.