Creative Young Weavers

Frin has her first session with the lovely students at Sixth Form College Colchester who pitch in to help her prepare the waste, silk selvedge kindly donated by one of the silk mills. Fuelled with snacks and lots of chat they steam through four bags full of selvedge turning it all into neatly rolled balls of colour for the first primary school workshop.

We are off to a cracking start with the next phase in the Sudbury Silk story working with four local primary schools. They are all really enthusiastic for their pupils to try weaving and learn more about the fantastic industry on their doorstep. Once more, we are grateful for the patience of Adam the designer at BRIX as we get ready to launch the new webpage!

We went back to the drawing board to review the project model and identified a choice of face to face workshop sessions within Covid...

Frin has had a busy week this week preparing all the new resources for the school activity. A super sunny day and she calls in at Apogee Print, Earls Colne to collect the vinyl stencil they generously made for the project. Then over to Colchester Makers Space to print up the bright yellow bags. One hundred prints later and she earns herself an hour in the sunshine waiting for the ink to dry! Back at the office, we start talking to community groups about supplying them with c

It’s a proper team effort this week, packing, packing, getting the craft bags ready for delivery to St Gregory’s School for their self-led workshop session, 32 yellow perils! A day of slotting in cardboard looms, printed postcards and lots of colourful silk selvedge to enthuse the pupils. Frin made sure there was a bag for the teachers as well, didn’t want them to feel left out, plus they may want to practice before hand!! Frin’s mum, Libby helps out too, they make short work

Back to school this week. We are very grateful to Cavendish School for their commitment to working with us to enable their pupils to...

We are really on a roll now, Frin is back in Cavendish Primary this week to catch up on progress with their weaving panels. She got off...

Really lovely feedback from St Gregory CEVC Primary School this week who had their pupils individual craft bags delivered to the school and asked their own teachers to run the sessions. It is clear from the feedback and beaming faces of the pupils that the staff did a really good job. We have now completed the school workshop activity and we feel incredibly privileged to have been given the chance to work with pupils who have only recently returned to the classroom after such

After remodelling the project to make it Covid safe to continue working with the schools, our next challenge was how to display the work. We were really pleased to be working in partnership with Sudbury Library to host the display but making it accessible to the public was just not going to be possible, so working together with the help of staff from the Tourist Information centre and the Town Council, we are really pleased to have secured the shop unit right across the road

A busy week collecting in the final batch of panels from Sudbury Library, Sudbury QH WI, Tourist Information staff and the Town Council ready for the exhibition set up next week. Some lovely colour mixes in the panels and some even more lovely feedback on postcards from the many community participants that have taken part. The youngest is 5 years old and the oldest 92 years old and we are really pleased to see the huge range of benefits expressed by the participants taking pa

After a very long day yesterday, threading the 80 plus woven panels together and arranging all the signage, it is an early start in Sudbury to hang the exhibition and make the window display at 2, Market Hill. It is a lovely sunny day and unloading the cars is a chance to answer the questions of passers-by, curious to know what we are up to and everyone is really positive about us filling the shop window. We are very grateful for the support of volunteers Roger and Libby (and

We are really glad we were able to secure the shop window for the exhibition, at least now the participants can still see their panels on display as they go about their essential shopping or daily exercise, fingers crossed we will be able to include Sudbury Library again soon. Now the display is all in place, this week has been a chance to let everyone know they have until 2nd January to take a look and also share the information with all the silk mill staff who participated

Now that everything is up and on display it really is a chance to properly look and reflect on what has taken place. Frin and I are both really grateful for the fantastic support we have had from the whole community to not only make sure the project could resume, but also creating something that brought people together and get involved in something positive, sharing, even when not physically standing beside each other. It was especially significant to be going into schools

From tiny acorns….. this week we celebrated reaching 100 followers on our social media account, we are really grateful to our community of followers and for the press coverage the exhibition has received helping to get the word out. Thank you to Suffolk Free Press and Lesley Dolphin at BBC Radio Suffolk for continuing to support our work and raise the profile of the amazing workforce in Sudbury and the surrounding area who all graft so hard to create the fine silk recognised

With only 4 weeks left to run on the exhibition at 2 Market Hill, Sudbury we begin the process of collating all the photographs of each individual panel so we can work with Brix Design to create the digital collage of the project. They look beautiful together, but it is special to see each one individually, noticing the subtle colour combinations and textures and continuing to be amazed that the material being woven is waste! Even the waste they produce in silk weaving is b

We love working with BRIX and are eternally grateful for their patient and calm response to our many, tiny, detailed requests… the...

Lots of paperwork this week, pulling together all the photographs and quotes from the participants in the project to include in our final report for the Arts Council. It feels like such a long journey we have been on, especially when you think how much life has changed in the last 12 months, looking back on the meetings with the Primary Schools on bright, sunshiny days full of excitement and expectation about sharing the project with the pupils and lets not forget the fantast

And finally, the paperwork is complete, the photographs all put in order and the report has been sent off. For people out and about in Sudbury there is still the chance to see the woven panels on display at 2 Market Hill. They will remain in the window until lockdown 3 is lifted and we can go back into the unit to take down the work and return it to each participant. BRIX have done a great job bringing all the panels together in the Digital Collage on this website, take a loo

And finally, so long, farewell for now…… As we put our feet up for a well-earned cup of tea and slice of cake, we wanted to take this opportunity to share our thanks and appreciation to all of you for making Creative Young Weavers a success. Engagement projects are all about the people, the partners and community participants that come together with their energy, commitment, and enthusiasm to breathe life into an idea, making it bigger and better than we could ever have imagi