My German Passport

I was born in Dortmund in Nordrhein Westfalen, Germany. Dortmund was a mine and steel town in the Rhine Ruhr Metropolitan industrial heart of Germany.

I lived in Germany up until I was 24. At 16 I left school nearly a year earlier than I was meant to as I was part of the cohort affected by an adjustment of the start dates for the academic year. Whilst in Germany I was engaged with the local Ecological group which actively supported the Green Party (first elected into German Parliament in 1983), I trained as a nurse and gave birth to my first child there.

I first moved to Bradford on Avon and then came to Birmingham in 1990 to study. All of the above came with me. My life is very firmly and committedly in the UK but I am also undeniably German.

My British passport

This passport is valid from 24th December 2018 and is my very first British Passport.

By 2018 I had been in the UK for 38 years. Brexit was erupting around us and for my husband and I, it raised questions about whether we bugger off to Sweden or the Netherlands. I hate that I was made to question that. It makes me furious.

To earn this red passport and the citizenship behind it I had to prove employment for 38 years worth of work, spend a load of money and complete a test on the British monarchy, history and culture that I had to revise for.

As if 38 years was not enough in and of itself.

Hairs, Beads and Paintings

It is no secret that I like to make things with my hands. Presented here is a needle felted rabbit made out of wool which I created for my grandchildren in Canada. It is a test piece for the one I made out of their husky dog Zoe’s hair. They were less keen on that one for some reason.

Alongside it is a small bead bracelet gifted to me by my grandson Matti and some paintings by him, and his sisters Katrina and Chloe. Being on opposite sides of the world handmade objects like these somehow provide an important connection.

I have made a cot quilt for each of the grandchildren which was my way of hugging them when I could not be with them.

A collection of my fabrics and teas from across the world

No matter where I travel I always find textiles, or they find me.

When I go to Laos I weave with the weavers.

When I go to Vietnam I go to the markets and explore the small crafts shops to admire the skill of the makers, the colours and the incredible details.

When I go to China I would search museums and ask friends to take me to places where I can find the special textiles and talk to their creators.

Being brought up drinking herbal teas I nearly always bring back some tea or tea ingredients for mixing my own concoctions. In my home I have quite a range which includes: Ulong, first picks, teas from the Vietnamese Highlands, German ready made herbal teas and my own mixes of aniseed, fennel, caraway, turmeric, cinnamon and ginger. And of course, can I interest you in a cup of Laos silkworm poo tea?

A collection of rubbish I collected at my local park

Through the pandemic going out on walks I found myself increasingly frustrated by the rubbish littering Stechford. People think if they throw it in the bushes, it is gone. It makes me so mad.

So I, joined by a couple of neighbours, went litter picking. Every Saturday morning from 8-10am we start from the Morden Road entrance of the Bordesley Green Recreation Ground with our pickers and some bags and try to clean up the local area. There will be three or four, sometimes more people and we usually collect 12-15 bags of rubbish, every single week. Our record so far is 23 bags of rubbish collected in what equates to 10 man hours.

Apart from plastic bottles, cans, sweet wrappers and crisp packets we have found car tyres, knives, clothing, carpets, a baby buggy, suitcases, furniture and increasingly we find nitrous oxide cartridges.

Extracts from community projects I have been involved in

A lot of the work I do I do for very little money. I run or I am part of a few community groups. Some of it I do because of a strong conviction that they are necessary like the Repair Cafes I have been involved in setting up.

I have been running the Daily Thread textile group on Tuesdays at the Old Printworks in Balsall Heath since 2017 because I wanted to exchange with textile people. I wanted to share what I know with others and learn from them.

Some projects like the Moseley Road Baths Café Stitchery embroidery project, where users and local people embroidered swimmer figures onto seating and hangings for the community area at the Baths, I did just for the sheer fun of it. It allowed me to work with all sorts of people and get to know an interesting space even closer.

Fabrics I designed for different fashion collections

Although I hated textiles through school, my fascination with fabrics began when seeing drop spindles making woollen yarn. Something clicked and experimenting with textiles has been consistent in my life ever since. In order to realise my ideas I needed to learn how to properly design so I took a drawing course and then enrolled in an art foundation course in 1997.

Between 1993 and 2004, I worked 4 years for a French fashion company in London. I didn’t design the garments, but I created the fabrics for the designs. What I enjoyed most is that I had the opportunity to play, experiment and learn. I got to work with textiles in ways I never usually would.

In the 90’s, nobody was really working with felt. It is quite a normal thing in Germany but here nobody had really worked with it contemporarily. Nobody did it quite like I did. I later produced designs under my own Tactile Design label.

A collage of many of the things running through my mind

I need to know how things work and why, challenging what I could do differently or what I could improve or hijack for another purpose.

I think I like researching and learning stuff so that I am able to think and to play.

I am currently trying to learn about augmented reality to teach weaving. I have grown leather like fabric from kombucha cultures which I now want to make into garments or bags. I have just discovered the possibility of dyeing with bacteria directly on fabrics. It offers a much more sustainable way of dyeing so I really want to learn how that is done.

Who knows what my curiosity might lead me to experiment with next?

Assorted nursing text books, images and a pulse timer

The first career path I embarked upon after school was nursing. After a foundation year I started the nursing course in 1976 and went on maternity leave with my first son Janosch the day after my final exam. After 6 weeks maternity leave, I went back to working night shifts on an intensive care unit where I caught tuberculosis. I was off for a year and had to raise him wearing a mask, similar to the ones we have worn through the pandemic.

When I was well enough I decided to complete my A levels at college to potentially study Medicine. Which I am glad to say I never did.

In 1982 our family moved to the UK, my partner at the time was British which allowed us to start our lives here. After getting used to the language and culture and having my second son Jonathan in 1985 I continued to work part time as a nurse until 1990.

Gifts from my international engagements

Meeting my now husband in 1993 I eventually joined his company, People and Organisation in 2000.

I was working part time as a textile designer and part time as a consultant. I now work full time as a director of the company. While working here I completed a Masters course in Development Management at the Open University through 2008.

In my role in this organisation I have travelled to many countries like South Africa, Vietnam, China and Laos. The panda is one example of the presents I received on these travels. It was gifted to me at a function in western China.

I enjoy meeting new people, learning what they are trying to achieve and finding the best way to give them the support they need.

An assortment of objects reflecting my connections across the world

Yeow and I rarely go on ‘holidays’. Our international travel is mostly about work or seeing our family or friends.

Most of my family lives in Germany, some in Sweden. Yeow has family in Malaysia, China, Singapore and Australia. Our son and his young family live in Montreal, Canada whilst my nephew and his Brazilian wife are at the moment deciding whether to live in Sweden or Portugal.

With this in mind, Yeow and I could have chosen to live anywhere in the world. But we have chosen to stay in Birmingham, we know how Birmingham works and have firm links to the different communities and our friends here. For us, this is our home and we will do what we can to make it a better place.

Even if we both were not born here, we are ‘Stechford’ Brummies.