Weaving Stories Threading Lives, A Community Loom at the Library

Every October in Ireland we celebrate Social Inclusion Week and during that week there are hundreds of events across the country which celebrate diversity, promote social inclusion and highlight the tireless work done by many community groups.
For our contribution to Social Inclusion Week 2014 I decided to run a Community Loom project in the library. I had come across a few blog posts and tweets from other libraries over the years who had community looms and I mentally stored the idea in my 'I want to do that someday' file. Social

Inclusion Week seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Why a loom?

• Community Looms have been used worldwide as a way to illustrate the 'weaving together' of a community. 
• It is applicable to all ages. 
• Weaving is a very old tradition in many countries and is well recognised and loved as a traditional craft.
•  It's easy and cheap to do, it takes minimal effort (well slightly more than minimal) and can have a great positive impact on the participants. 
• The different colours and different textures made by each individual illustrate beautifully the diversity of a community. 
• The fact that each row builds to create a beautiful finished piece of art, which gets its strength from the binding together of the rows illustrates how a community functions and is strengthened by social participation.

Some of our younger participants
putting the finishing touches. 

What's it got to do with libraries? Well, I'm all about literacy and what we can do in public libraries to create literary rich environments. A Community Loom promotes literacy on several levels.

Day One 

• Literacy is a social practice. Anything that brings people together and stimulates conversation and storytelling and creates a connection between two people ticks a literacy box for me. 
• The physical act of weaving a piece of yarn or ribbon helps develop the fine motor skills needed for writing.
• Participants learn new vocabulary by learning the weaving terminology. 
• When participants learn the weaving stitches they are learning patterns which is the first step in early numeracy. Research has shown that numeracy skills contribute to good literacy skills. 

For the project I had three events. I had a large loom on display in the library with materials, instructions and myself when possible beside it. I invited people to weave a piece of ribbon or yarn into the loom and explained the purpose behind it. I also had two workshops during the week, one open to members of the public and one to which we invited a class from a nearby school. For the workshops we wove a small wall hanging on cardboard looms. I will write about those in my next blog post. 

I received so much positive feedback from people during the project. Participants loved the idea that they were contributing to a community project that would result in a work of art. Over the week I connected with a lot of people that come to the library every day. It was such a pleasure to interact with them in a different way to the usual checking in and out of books, or photocopying or technical problems, which make up about 80% of our daily interactions with the public. I learned people's names, where they were from and they told me stories of their own experiences and knowledge of the craft of weaving, or other community projects which they were part of.

And so the technical side. I asked a local picture framer to make the loom for me. He used a stretcher frame, measuring about 120cm x 80cm. He hammered approximatley 30 nails across the top of the frame and the same across the bottom, about 2cm apart starting and finishing 10cm from the edge.

I had a mixture of ribbon, paper, fancy yarn both thick and thin. It was very difficult to predict how much yarn to purchase. People automatically went for the thicker yarn and ribbon, though I still needed the thinner yarn for making the warp at the beginning.  I had clear instructions with illustrations beside the loom, but I was also on hand to help out. Some people needed a bit of encouragement while other's preferred that I didn't hover over them.

I also invited people to write their story on a piece of paper and weave that in, and to my delight two people did!

Some of the written stories.

And the title of the project? Weaving Stories, Threading Lives. Some people thought it was a storytelling workshop so I might rethink the title if I were to run the project again.

What level of work is needed? There was a bit more preparation before the project than I anticipated but once it was set up, it was fairly self explanatory and almost a passive program. (Passive programming  - programs that can run in the library with minimal input from staff.) I did have to weave a row or two myself every now and then if I noticed the warp becoming lose and prompt people to have a go at weaving a row or two but apart from that there was very little input required.

I plan to take the tapestry off the loom and hang it in the library. Participants were curious to know if it would be on display afterwards. Once it's hanging we have a usable loom to pass around to other libraries or use again in the future. I would definitely recommend it as a project with little cost and work and significant impact and effect.