Unity Panda was a large-scale participatory art project led by artist Jonnet Middleton, developed in collaboration with chris+keir and involving a cultural exchange with China. The project brought together knitting, collective making, documentary practice, and touring exhibition formats to explore ideas of shared labour, cultural symbolism, and public participation.
As chris+keir, we became the official mascots of the project and documented its development through the short film Jonnet and the Pandas. We also supported the project through event facilitation, public engagement, and performance-based roles, acting as mediators between participants, audiences, and the artist.
Launched in April 2010 at Coventry Artspace and venues nationwide, Unity Panda invited members of the public to contribute by knitting individual parts of a panda using a 1946 pattern originally created to commemorate “Miss Unity Panda,” gifted to London Zoo. Participants could knit as much or as little as they wished, from simple ears to more complex limbs, or contribute through stuffing, sewing, and finishing the pandas. The emphasis was on collective effort rather than individual authorship.
The resulting knitted pandas toured as an interactive exhibition across the UK during 2010–11. In 2012, the project extended internationally when the Chinese Embassy invited Jonnet Middleton to present the pandas in Beijing, completing the project’s cultural exchange loop.
Unity Panda foregrounded making as a social act, using humour, nostalgia, and repetition to create space for conversation, memory-sharing, and intergenerational participation.
