On Friday 10th July 2026 the Coat of Hopes – an ever evolving, community created patchwork coat, on a pilgrimage through Britain towards the end of the climate and ecological emergency – will arrive in Porlock, having walked 2335 miles to reach this far.
The patch-less Coat set out from Newhaven, East Beach in Sussex on 30th of August 2021 on a continuous nine-week walk to Glasgow for the COP26 climate conference, gathering on its way pieces of blanket into which people had sewn their hopes for the places they live in the face of climate and ecological breakdown.
Since the failure of COP26, the Coat of Hopes has continued to walk throughout the land, collecting people’s sewn hopes and inviting all who encounter it along the way to wear the Coat in the understanding that “the turning of our future is on all our backs and feet” (as its song says). The organisers are committed to continuing the Coat’s journey, until the climate and ecological situation is no longer an emergency. There is no end in sight.
Barbara Keal from Lewes, instigating artist of the Coat, said ‘When faced with the enormity of climate and ecological breakdown, I see our only solution being to recognise our dependence on each other to maintain a world which is liveable. The energy to change our way of living must come from love, and a willingness to act on behalf of others. Walking with the Coat of Hopes is a practice which develops these attributes, even as we invite strangers throughout the land to put on this Coat of Hopes and “wear the promise that we all belong together”. Every walking day we lean into an unknown future and find fellow humans who are willing to help us on this impossible journey of witness’.
The Coat of Hopes is now in the 5th year of this pilgrimage-without-end, and bears well over 700 patches. Everyone is invited to make a patch. Wherever the Coat goes, it carries an invitation to all who are willing, to wear it, hear its song, and stand for a moment in consciousness of our interconnectedness with each other and all life, asking what that might require of us in the way we live our lives. Thousands of people have participated in this way.
This is not a funded project, but a free movement of people for hope in our shared future, it can happen only through the good will of people who choose to walk, sew, sing for, feed or shelter strangers. All are welcome to join this work in any of those ways and all of these things will be needed as the Coat continues its pilgrimage in 2026, heading for Land’s End.
More information can be found on the website www.coatofhopes.uk and please email yes@coatofhopes.uk if you would like to join us. All are welcome.
