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SAFIYA AHMED GRAPHIC DESIGNER EDUCATOR CO-FOUNDER SAFIYA AHMED GRAPHIC DESIGNER EDUCATOR CO-FOUNDER SAFIYA AHMED GRAPHIC DESIGNER EDUCATOR CO-FOUNDER


Chat and Patch:  
Periods in your language



Collaboration with Ricebox Studio
Funded by We Are Family Foundation and RIVET.

Role: Marketing, filming quilt shots, workshop facilitation, and launch event co-producer.

Chat and Patch: Periods In Your Language (2025-2026) is a period education campaign focusing on South Asian communities, reflecting on how periods are spoken about in families, languages, and cultures through intergenerational and intercultural dialogue.

The project began after a 2023 menstruation-in-media conference in Sheffield sparked a simple question: How do you say “period” in your language? With support from We Are Family Foundation, this question grew into a UK-based campaign connecting language, identity, and lived experience.



We delivered two core workshops, one in London and one in Sheffield, titled “Periods in Your Language”. Each 1.5–2 hour session brought together 16 participants to reflect on how periods were spoken about in their families, languages, and cultures. Through group discussions and typography-based design exercises, each participant created a quilt square visualising the word “period” (or its euphemisms) in their language, alongside an audio recording explaining its context, pronunciation, and cultural history.

Following the workshops, we produced a short documentary film “Chat and Patch: How do you say ‘periods’ in your language? ” that captured the process, featuring behind-the-scenes footage, interviews, and soundbites from participants and collaborators. The film served as both a creative output and a reflective tool for advocacy and education.

The final artwork of this project is a collaboratively stitched, interactive quilt bringing together the individual words by our participants. Each panel is wired and setup with a custom PCB board (designed by Physical Computing & Prototype Consultant, Ricarnaye Nelson) with capacitive touch technology, allowing viewers to touch the fabric and hear the associated audio—bringing language, sound, and memory together in a tactile, immersive experience.






The project culminated in a public launch at the Osmani Centre on International Women’s Day 2026. The event was open to those of all genders, religions, cultures, and offered a welcoming space for reflection, dialogue, and shared understanding. This project is part of an ongoing commitment to collaborative, community-led creative practice and does not claim custodianship but offers situated perspectives grounded in lived experience.