St Margarets House Opening - Before the Blood: Community & Belonging from Menarche to Migration

St. Margaret's House
21 Old Ford Road, London, E2 9PL (view map)

Friday 13th March 2026 at 6:30 PM

Accessibility - Accessible Toilets, Quiet Space, Relaxed Performance, Service Animals Area, Step Free Access, Wheelchair Accessible

St Margarets House Opening - Before the Blood: Community & Belonging from Menarche to Migration

Name: St Margarets House Opening - Before the Blood: Community & Belonging from Menarche to Migration
Start: 2026-03-13T18:30:00+00:00
End: 2026-03-13T20:30:00+00:00
Location: St. Margaret's House

Grand re-opening of…

🩸Before the Blood: community and belonging from menarch to migration🩸

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Our community project developed and delivered in collaboration with Nisaba will be enjoying a brief run at St Margarets House right around the corner in Bethnal Green. From 13th until 15th March, Before the Blood will be on display in their Chapel Gallery.

Come celebrate the re-opening, reflecting on four months of responses, engagement, thoughts and emotions.

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The exhibition began with a call out. We invited participants with a history of migration to join us in workshops exploring how menstrual health shapes and is shaped by the border, religious and cultural values, traditional knowledges and modern medicine. We – participants and organisers alike – allowed ourselves to reflect on both traumatic and joyful memories associated with menstruation. When did we have our first period? Who was with us? What did we know? How did it change us? What remedies do we use for pain or fatigue? Who are our confidantes? What do we teach our children? What cultural wisdom can we reclaim in remembrance? For some, these workshops were a first. They had never talked about their period, especially their first, so openly. For others, it came naturally – like talking about breakfast or the weather.

Out of these conversations emerged stories of periods suffered in silence and solitude; wisdom passed down from mothers or snippets of information passed between cousins; menarche experienced in the company of only a stoic father on one extreme and the whole village on the other. Far from painting a unified picture, our respective stories illustrated the breadth of lived experiences from culture to culture, country to country.

Here are only a fragment of these stories. Four portraits and four letters.

🗓️ Friday 13th March

⏰ 6.30m - 8.30pm

📍 St Margarets House

💸 Free entry