Community Weaving – The Picnic Rug
I’m just finished with the Weave To Heal Project in Wingham, NSW over three days. Wingham is part of my home and only half an our away. This project was partially funded by the Creative Recovery Network in response to the bushfires and floods in our area over the past few years.
A series of six x two hour sessions over three days resulted in about 24 participants contributing to a woven cloth. Its eventual community outing is planned to be as a huge picnic rug and community picnic which I think is a delightful outcome.
Even though we have had to sell our nifty ‘loom mobile’ over Covid, I was still able to transport four looms and two others were provided by Donna, fellow weaver artist, who was also working with the project. We both supplied all of the tools to make this possible.
We used a myriad of hand-dyed (by Donna and Jill) cotton sheeting to be the wefts. I tore them into strips of 9cm x length of the sheeting for easier handling which worked well. The old ‘minty wrapper’ tearing technique was used to create long lengths which could be wound onto rag/sakiori shuttles for easier manipulation in the weaving.
To provide a change now and again the participants also used cotton thread to weave in other colours as they were inclined. The looms are great to provide an alternate talking point and focus for the human hand work that is created on them. It is always inspiring to me how a group of people use the same resources in so many different ways.
Here you can see some of the magic happening and the growing cloth. Even two hour sessions produced a significant contribution from each weaver.
The project was held in the Women Kind Collective space in Wingham, NSW. It is the old and now disused NAB bank. It is an absolutely brilliant space with air con, carpet, kitchen and wonderful light. Having a communal space for projects similar to this is a real treasure as so many communities don’t have these types of meeting up and planning areas.
The project was developed by Jill Watkins from Circartus, a local and regional community circus, circus school and not-for-profit community development organisation. A warm thanks to Donna and Jill…and all of the weaver participants for working on this project.
