The Wool March celebrates the capacity of wool as a way to bring people together by 'walking with'. As a celebration of urban and rural relations, the Wool March is a annual event in a number of cities in the EU. We bring value to wool, interspecie relations, rural expertise, multicultural connectedness in an act of transhumance: the ancient practice of bringing herds from pasture to pasture. With beautiful hand felted blankets, sheep wear their own wool as activists promoting abilities of all.
Local
Netherlands
Tilburg The Netherlands and Loon op Zand, The Netherlands
It addresses urban-rural linkages
It refers to other types of transformations (soft investment)
No
No
Yes
2022-10-02
As an individual
First name: Cynthia Last name: Hathaway Gender: Female Nationality: Canada Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Cypresstraat 30 Town: The Hague Postal code: 2565LV Country: Netherlands Direct Tel:+31 6 19072789 E-mail:woolallianceforsocialagency@gmail.com Website:https://woolallianceforsocialagency.blog
The Wool March consists of the public, 300 local sheep and shepherds, walking together through an urban setting. The Wool March is a celebration of the way wool connects people to it, to their cultural heritage, to where they live, and the conditions we are experiencing by not doing so. These conditions regard the lack of the commons in our spaces of living where people can meet and do something together, based on shared values. Creating a multi-species walk connects people to other expertise and abilities, such as those of shepherds and sheep who create abundance through transhumance practices (walking herds from pasture to pasture). Metaphorically, we create pastures as we all walk together, through neighbourhoods and city centers to experience another way to move, create and produce community. As we walk, strangers are joined in a joyful walk, and in following the sheep and shepherd re-animate the city. History comes alive, as many cities in Europe were born from herding paths and watering nodes. Now paved over, these paths come alive, as ways to connect city dwellers to nature, and to a sense of belonging. The walk excites the city, and people lean out of windows, or come out onto the street, join in to a moment of wonder in their daily routine. This walk and the production of the blankets the sheep wear, is a multicultural production, as wool reminds people of their past, wherever their cultural heritage. Thus, Turkish, Moroccan, Syrian, Dutch, Bulgarian, Ukrainian, French, Spanish, Pakistani women, men, children come together to revisit their past, placing hands in the wool to felt the beautiful sheep blankets. Embroidered sayings on the blankets tell their stories. The community is whole as we walk, as the sheep and shepherd guide us, walking to and making of pastures together. Pastures are both physical and mental entities, as we make community as we walk, and end in a physical pasture.
Creating the commons
Multicultural and generational relations
Connecting rural with urban
Do It Together
Celebrating human and non-human relations
In terms of ecological sustainability, an objective of the Wool March is to reintroduce the act of transhumance into our daily lives, as a way to create biodiversity through the practice of walking from pasture to pasture with herds. Transhumance is an ancient custodianship system practiced around the world, although in peril. Walking animals, (now mostly shipped by truck or freighter) over land helps to restore and maintain biodiversity within soils, maintains important pasture lands, and safeguards the shepherding profession. Transhumance is in opposition to transportation, as it creates abundance, is not extractive and takes the multi-expertise of the shepherd to safe guard land, animal, and custodian relations to the land. Shepherding and transhumance are being proven to stop desertification around the globe, and is a useful and practical model in times of climate change. In terms of social sustainability, transhumance has created rich traditions in the past throughout the world. The taking of sheep up to mountains or to pasture twice a year creates celebrations and rituals. It creates community, as people mark their seasons, line streets, and have festivals to celebrate the animals walking through villages and towns. Now with urban-centrism, our cities lack connection to the rural, and mark time in a linear structure. Transhumance's importance to fight climate change and shallow time is still around us to show us another way. We only need to educate and promote it. And quickly, as shepherds and this practice are disappearing for oil-based transport (trucking animals to pasture, or shipping via global freighters), barriers to ancient paths are cut by private property, and sedentary mass production farming is polluting the planet. The Wool March brings transhumance back into and through streets, stops traffic (transport) to say there is another way. Transhumace creates bounty rather than scarcity, balanced relations with the planet, and with each other.
To seduce people into joining the wool march, to create a clear way to communicate what it was about, and create a sense of belonging as a walker, I choose to design a happening. A happening is not rehearsed and unannounced. It was important way to make people feel excited, and exhilarated. The only known thing known was the date, October 2, 2022 and a starting location. It was a great surprise to all to find waiting 300 local sheep and shepherds assembled. Having a lot of sheep created impact for the walker, onlooker,and spaces we would be It was a public free event, so anyone could subscribe, or join in along the way. We became a group based on shared values: desire to create a city in another way, to value transhumance, to be with sheep together in action, to talk with shepherds as experts, to create more public public space. The Wool March was an action, a ritual, a display for all to see, a celebration. Walkers met at a very important and historic wool textile museum where the sheep were waiting. Hand felted arm bands were given out to each walker. Beautifully hand felted blankets from the wool of the sheep, and embroidered with sayings of collected wool stories were displayed and placed on sheep. The people who felted the blankets were also walking. A sense of pride developed as that they could see their story about wool in their language, in movement, piercing through streets, through mental barriers. Sayings were in Turkish, French, Spanish, Pakistani, Dutch, Croatian, German, Iranian, Urdu, and English. Bells were placed on the sheep to make noise, and support celebration, to hear from afar, something was coming. We mapped the route carefully with the shepherd and the city archivist to walk along ancient sheep paths from which the city grew. We made the route passing through neighborhoods often termed as "problematic', creating wonder and the invitation to join in (which many did). The design was welcoming, not complex, easy to join into.
Before the Wool March, I had many months of setting up my felting studio in multicultural communities. For example, I was invited to set up my studio in a neighborhood in Rotterdam called the Bospolder Tussendijk, a community full of ideas and bottom up activities but often overlooked, or considered by government. Creating felting workshops in the outdoor public space, having an open door studio policy, being there every day for months, having huge bags of local wool visible, attracted people to come to me and share stories of wool. And through felting, a very accessible way to make things with wool, many people would come weekly to help make the sheep blankets. By making together, as with quilt making, stories come out. Not only about wool in their homeland and childhood, but also what is missing today, such as making things from scratch instead of buying everything, connecting to grandparents and their skills of making, the estrangement experienced in a new land such as The NL, and a desire to see themselves reflected in the making of their community.I heard stories from men and women, children and teenagers, and the elderly whilst we had our hands in the wool. Turkish and Moroccan women shared tips on how they felted, or washed wool in streams. Iranian men showed young Bulgarian men how to make a felting and washing station. Young children from many nationalities were thrilled to touch a real sheep when I brought some to the studio. They learned the wool made clothing, and was from a real animal. Wool is a social fabric. A key objective of the project is to transform siloed spaces into community gathering and places of co-production. I believe any community experiencing disenfranchisement, loneliness, disconnection, and/or the desire to share one's ideas and skills, it is through wool (making, touching, smelling, experiencing) and the Wool March (walking together with sheep, shepherd and each other in our surroundings) a feeling of citizenship is achievable.
100+citizens benefited from the production of the Wool March as a source of empowerment. To have a way to connect to others, to stand behind something that is very personal, direct, and enables easy access and participation, made the Wool March a space of trust and ownership. The making of the blankets for the march was also a way 150 people got involved, and especially for those who do not see themselves, or participate in artistic or cultural events or spaces. Opening up a space of design and art to be heavily reliant on collaboration, and co-production was considered thoughtful, caring of one's context, and developed long lasting friendships between citizens, and citizens and designer. Feeling that their stories mattered, the felting workshops created a sense of pride and belonging. They felt they had something to contribute from their own cultural heritage, and that it was valued. Those who joined the Wool March were deeply affected by the community spirit to do something together, and to be the first to walk through a city as a cultural and political space, and with sheep! To walk with 300 sheep through a city center is a spectacular feeling, as though a walker is piercing through daily routine, with something magical and unexpected. Many were moved to feel the connection to their city through walking with, seeing the city in a new light and from a different perspective. Walking along ancient transhumance paths of the city of Tilburg connected citizens to their history in a very intimate and physical way. The past was present, the present was the future. Shepherds saw the Wool March to be an important way to show their expertise to a wider audience, as they are not seen when out on the land, but feel they must be heard. Shepherds want to be part of city planning, as co-partners in future development plans. The rural is often objectified for expansion needs of the city, however, shepherds and others have tremendous skills to share for sustainable place making.
City Museum Tilburg: Historians advised in planning the Wool March route, supplying ancient maps showing herding paths and watering holes of the Tilburg region where the Wool March took place. They provided an extra layer of information and relevance to why we were walking a certain route, and whose feet came before. Stichting DOEN: a funding body for cultural and social designs. Stichting DOEN (Foundation DOEN) was a funder of the Wool March, believing it reflected the fund's aims to create resilient cross cultural communities through design and culture projects. Het Nieuwe Instituut (HNI), Rotterdam, and the show In Search of the Pluriverse curated by Sophie Krier and Erik Wong: The HNI is one of the most important and critical Institutes in Europe for architecture and design. They exhibited the Wool March research, blankets and film, giving the Wool March an important place in the debate regarding sustainable urban planning. Textile Museum Tilburg: the most prominent textile museum in The Netherlands and Europe, hosted the Wool March as a starting point for sheep, shepherds and marchers. They have shown interest to have the sheep blankets in their permanent collection, and want to host the Wool March every year. As both a historical and innovative hub for material research, they saw the Wool March as a necessary way to promote wool, and connect to a wider audience. World Hope Forum: an online platform for practices of hope. These practices include new forms of entrepreneurship, preservation of cultural heritage such as craft and indigenous knowledge. I was invited to present the Wool March to a world wide audience, extending the Wool March to a global audience. Their subscribers (15,000) have become supporters of the Wool March, and from this large network I have been invited to create a Wool March in Belgium, India, Pakistan, Canada and Italy. Datini Fibers of Karachi Pakistan: supplied first hand information about global wool production and its devaluation.
Shepherd, Shepherding and Multi-specie relations: It was important to bring to the general public the abilities of sheep/shepherd relationship. This system between human-animal shows and informs us (citizens, governments, organizations) what systems already exist for sustainable practices. The sheep and shepherd led us into the city, as a gesture to say we belong to the city, and planning of our future. As walkers behind the sheep and shepherd, hierarchies were switched. We learn from shepherds what is needed to work with the land, with animals, in movement, and the multi-level knowledge to make pastures for all. A shepherd's knowledge of the land, plant and soil, invasive species, biodiversity, the weather, seasons, and animal care reflect a system that embraces complex knowledge, and works within it. This is a model we can all be inspired and learn from, as our environmental problems need thinkers and do-ers that can work on many levels, and in an awareness one thing effects the other. Designer: As the lead designer and concept developer, the Wool March needed to attract, and create awareness wool is a sustainable textile when procured from a transhumance system. The design of the blankets needed to be easy to make to allow many to be involved. Choosing the felting process (use of only water and soap, with hands on wool) was important to facilitate community involvement. Sheep: The design also had to fit the sheep, so many fittings were necessary. They played an important role in saying yes or no with their bodies and comfort with a blanket of their own wool on their bodies. I worked with shepherds to make sure the sheep 'agreed'. Also, the sheep were essential as providers of the wool. Community organizations: this citizen oriented process and result, community organizations provided free studio space and promoted the project. On the March, we walked together in unity, committed and in sync to think, do and make our spaces together with all our abilities.
Results: a multi-cultural, multi-specie community building event called the Wool March. With 300 sheep, shepherds and 100+ citizens, we walked together to support transhumance as a way to be together through walking, sharing stories through making with and supporting wool, and a system that creates diversity instead of scarcity. Diversity is defined as a multicultural and multi-expertise process, gathering, and active event, working together for sustainable futures. Diversity is also defined as biodiversity, and a system of walking with sheep and shepherds over land for biodiverse soils, and pasture lands. The outcome was a celebration, a support for this idea to walk together, to intervene daily practices to show another system at work. It was a very tangible, public, easily accessible way to bring people together, and change space and minds. The activist spirit was joyful, filled with optimism and energy, and the desire to do it again and again. People came out of their homes, hung out of windows as we walked, laughing, taking photos, and joining in. A parade of human, animal, opened up rural and urban spaces to each other with glee. Those who made the blankets from all regions of the world (Syrians, Moroccan, Turkish, Algerian, Pakistani, Canadian, Croatian, French, Italian, Spanish, Iranian, Columbian) made collaborative effort, finding a space to move together into the future. The impacts from just walking with were tremendous. A simple action brought about so much community spirit and care for doing it together, to regain the streets, to bring humanity, animal, land together, in a walk but also an understanding we must plan our futures together, with care. The shepherd and sheep gained a bigger audience to share expertise and be co-workers, the walkers felt they could be part of a system of change, the city was given an alternative way to make citizenship based on multicultural and species relations, rural and urban coming together, and a public public space.
We often are led to believe we need big, expensive, and complex designs to bring people together, to create effect. We are becoming numbed as a society by too much stimulation, the extravaganza, most likely brought about by digital design. In many ways, we are pacified. We can sit back, and be fed by tiny devices to watch the world, rather than be part of it. The Wool March is an example of a very direct, uncomplicated and easy way to experience something very deeply, and be motivated to change something as a community. Knowing it is possible to join an existing system, that of transhumance, is a way to connect to land and animals as co-workers and producers, to a sustainable action, to a new way of experiencing our cities with low impact. The word innovative suggests something totally new, different, but I see the Wool March as bringing back ancient practice into the here and now. How it regains importance, is used in a different way, is made public by public, this is innovative. You only need your feet to join in (or bicycle or electric scooter). Walking with sheep through a city is innovative now, because it hasn't been done in The Netherlands for hundreds of years, in yet it was a typical practice for the region, and in other parts of Europe. Infact, transhumance is a global tradition of making pasture. Such a 'simple' action (there is some coordination involved but is it really ground work, with feet in community) has global connections and consequences. Having animals also 'march' brings their devaluation into the picture, as 95% of wool is considered waste material, usually incinerated, dumped or sent to China for pennies a kilo.
I developed a social and participatory design and methodology through artistic connective practices. As a designer, I create products to reflect and support community action and concerns, platformed on 20 wool blankets with embroidered sayings (40 in total) on each side. The blankets were visually attractive, and communicated many messages from a variety of people about wool, being together, supporting systems of social and environmental sustainability. The complex nature of the project, (to create more public public spaces, bring urban and rural knowledges together, create a multicultural experience, impact and production, change a city, bring animal and human relations in balance, share sustainable practices such as transhumance) I created an an open door makers space and final event. The Wool March was a design and designed. Inspired by parades, where many floats or platforms are made to show expertise, The Wool March adapted a form people already knew. This creates easy access, read-ability, and draws an audience. The shepherd, sheep and walkers were given a stage, so to speak, and a context of a city and its streets. The open door wool studio is a set up connecting the designer to the street in which the studio. Not tucked away in a building, but close to a city market where hundreds of people go twice a week, the wool studio is a part of the community, a place to drop in, connect to and through wool making to each other and to a variety of cultural pasts. It creates community. The designer facilitates community production, not for the benefit of one's self, but for the larger public. Ideas collected shape the project. The design is open ended, dependent on community involvement. As a designer, I am on a path to connect to and with the sources of one's material, and bring into the design the many producers along the chain. This includes animal, land, shepherd, but also those far away, such as wool recyclers in Pakistan. The Wool March is a local-global action.
There are sheep, shepherds and wool makers all over the world. The Wool March can be taken up by any group to do themselves. I am making a Wool March kit, with a sheep blanket pattern to make a wool march yourself, or to send the wool blankets back to me to include in my next Wool March. I will provide felting instructions for the wool blanket but the process is up to the maker, and can be woven, or stitched. The blanket can be made by hand or machine, in anyway that celebrates the skills, cultural heritage of the maker, their history, their context. The wool should be local, to support local shepherds or farmers getting nothing for their wool. And also to promote the beautiful possibilities wool provides, but overlooked by, for example cottons and polyesters. The Wool March Kit is sent to community groups all over the EU working with wool, and/or creating local community initiatives. The Wool March Kit is activator. As wool is a social fabric, it brings together people to make, to share, to do. I already have groups in Spain, Italy, France, Pakistan, Belgium wanting a Wool March Kit. I am also planning a Wool March to Brussels, to support those trying to change policy making wool a waste product. With a local sheep herd and shepherds, an international community will come together to walk to Brussels. Wool and all its associations (transhumance practices, shepherding, citizenship, trans-cultural heritages, mobility rights) must be a part of the discussion towards finding ways to live and walk more nimbly together on the planet.
Wool is a global connector. Around the globe wool has been used for centuries to clothe and feed, create biodiverse landscapes, support local industries, and prosperity. Wool is renewable, biodegradable, has unmatched textile qualities, and when procured within a transhumance system, has environmental, economic and cultural benefits. In yet, wool is undervalued around the globe the moment it is grown on the back of a sheep. The textile industry spurred on by fast fashion and consumerism, focuses on cheap, and highly extractive materials. The industry is the second largest polluter after the oil industry. For example, cottons and polyesters, the textiles most used by the textile industry are large agents of climate change, producing mononculture-based land practices. Organic cotton takes up incredible amounts of water and land. Polyesters are not biodegradable, and are found to make up toxic global waste dumps. The production of textiles is also at the cost of human lives and welfare, with harsh working conditions, low pay, and toxic environmental damage. We can change the textile system, human and animal welfare, and the environment if we look at practices such as transhumance. This is a system of co-working together (animal, human, land) and the sharing, support of ancient skills rooted in multi-knowing (shepherding) and custodian relations. Many people find it incredible daunting to make a start, or make impact as the problems are so big and 'wicked', but by following the wool, we have a way in our own backyards. And as wool is part of a global chain of producers, our effect locally can have a ripple effect. Wool is like a necklace of pearls, each pearl a woolly node around the world, a context, a practice, a memory that crosses borders. Where we start a Wool March has effect here, there and everywhere. We just need to walk together down its paths.
