2018-08-16
By Julie Scanlon, GI Co-editor
If you have ever attended a rally or march in WA, or even driven down Stirling Highway when groups have been out protesting, you will surely have seen a banner or two, and if they have an environmental, peace or social equity theme there is a strong possibility it was the work of Judy Blyth.
In January 1986 Judy and family moved to Perth from Melbourne where she had been a member of Friends of the Earth’s Eltham branch. As its coordinator she wanted to make its information stalls at local events look welcoming and that is why she made her first banner. The skills she had honed for Eltham FOE were immediately put to use here in WA, when she popped into a fraught PND meeting discussing the imminent Palm Sunday Rally and March for Nuclear Disarmament (1986). Something was urgently needed to outshine a banner that the Young Liberals planned would take over the head of the march. Its message, ‘Peace through Strength’ was opposite to PND’s. But who could make a PND banner saying ‘Security through Peace’ in time? Judy volunteered and so her ‘magic’ began. Over the next thirty years Judy thinks she has made around 350 banners; so many that she lost count long ago. In one year alone she averaged about one a week.
As a child Judy loved drawing. She was a 1945 baby, growing up after the war. Luckily her father worked as an investment consultant in an office, enabling him to bring home a steady supply of waste paper. ‘The best that he ever brought home to us three kids, was gorgeous orangey-yellow,’ Judy recollects. Most of the paper was white and the only tools for drawing were plain lead or coloured pencils.
The banners are mainly made in Judy’s home. Some are designed by whoever commissions them, while more often than not, Judy designs them herself, and almost all have been done as a volunteer using her own funds. When making banners, the process starts with a sketch. ‘One-third of an A4-sized envelopes are often a good size for this,’ Judy said. ‘That’s the right proportions for many banners.’
She then folds the sketch into a grid and transposes it onto a large piece of calico that has been folded the same way.
Judy has rolls of calico in a wardrobe. Her banner workspace is firstly the dining room table to draw up and machine sew, and next the back veranda for painting.
Judy told me that making banners has become a much-loved habit, but more importantly it connects her with so many different issues and has been refreshingly broadening. “It keeps me connected to so many like-minded friends and that has always been a joy to me.”
If anyone is interested in following in Judy’s footsteps and has the time to learn banner making, Judy would love to be able to train up a few people. She suggests that they could visit her at her Daglish home (just one or two at a time) for a hands-on workshop when she’s doing a new banner, or if they have some ideas of their own they want to work on, she is happy to mentor and share her knowledge and skills. Judy can be contacted through the Greens Office.
Photo Credits: All photos by Judy Blyth except: Judy painting Knitting Nannas banner – John Blyth; and, Fremantle Peace Boat with Scott Ludlam and Stirling Highway bridge ‘Greens 4 Grandkids’ – Viv Glance