Meet ‘Rosette the Suffragette,’ our symbol for International Women’s Day 2025

It's quickly approaching International Women's Day 2025, and our curious young people had the opportunity to learn about the history of the suffragette movement and Emmeline Pankhurst's trailblazing legacy with come craftsy colour symbolism on a recent on our Creative Expression Saturday programme supported by Children in Need.

The theme this year is 'Accelerate Action', and arts practititioner Loren kickstarted the session by encouraging everyone to explore what the colours of the suffragette movement meant to them, such as:

• Green: nature, hope, forest leaves

• Purple: dignity, loyalty

• White: kindness, purity, peace

And of course, other colours:

• Blue: relaxed, blueberries, smoothies

• Red: strength, evil, danger

• Yellow: joyful, sunshine, even Minions!

• Pink: kindness, flowers, innocence

• Black: black cat, darkness, strength

  
  

See Loren in 'action' in the photos and videoclip below - what do these colours symbolise to you?

Then everyone got stuck in creating some colourful rosettes on our impromptu mannequin, which is to be displayed in a super exciting Manchester location during International Women’s Day on 8th of March!

What you’ll need to take action to make your own rosette:

• Multicoloured crepe paper for ruffles and rosette tails in a colourway of your choice

• Paper circles

• Felt tips or other craft materials for the central design

• Scissors

• PVA glue or glue stick

  
  

Step 1: simply ruffle the crepe paper into a concertina around the outline of a paper circle.

Step 2: Create your design on the circle – you can use anything from felt tips, glitter, coloured pencils... the world of arts and crafts is your oyster, BUT it should reflect something meaningful to you.

Step 3: Snip one or two strips of crepe paper into ribbon tails using scissors.

Step 4: Attach the ribbons to the back of the rosette using glue like in the picture below:

Step 5: Et voilà, a bright and eyecatching rosette - perfect for display, just like the ones below.

Afterwards, our young people came up with a name for the mannequin, which was… *drum roll please*:

'ROSETTE THE SUFFRAGETTE!'

A big welcome to Rosette from the Afrocats and kittens, and here's some happy faces of approval:

We can’t wait to see Rosette on display at our top-secret location this weekend!

Keep an eye out for where Rosette will be on display on our socials in the run-up to our International Women’s Day event on Saturday 8th March – we can’t wait to see you there.