Button memory jars

This weekend I’ll be running drop-in craft activities as part of Tea in the Park. It’s a great way of celebrating our fantastic park, connecting with the local community and raising some money to pay for all the things the local council no longer does.

We’ll be doing button and jewellery upcycling. People have been so generous donating things. I love the idea of unexpectedly seeing someone wearing one of my former brooches upcycled into a necklace. One of my friends is really upset about her mother’s button jar that went missing after she died. But I hadn’t really thought about the stories that button jars can tell and how they link us to our past.

Some of the buttons must have been from the 80s and they instantly reminded me of the school dresses my mum would insist on sewing herself instead of buying the smart ones from M&S. Just the feel of some made me remember our much-loved Trinidadian “granny” – a neighbour we adopted as we didn’t have our own grandparents. She wore prim buttoned-up tea dresses and would tell my mum that she’d “knock her block off” if she tried to help in the kitchen.

Other buttons would have been worn to smart parties, graduations, christenings and funerals. Others may have just been spare buttons for boring work shirts.

But there is something about sharing these buttons and their history (real or imagined) that makes me feel connected to the people around me. And I’m so excited to see what people will transform them into and the new memories they will create tomorrow.