About Us - WOVEN

WOVEN is a celebration of innovation in textiles across Kirklees

WOVEN is a biennial festival that first took place in June 2019, with the next big event due to happen in June 2023.

It is initiated and funded by Kirklees Council, but is owned by everyone, including community groups, textile businesses, cultural and educational organisations, artists and heritage sites across the district.

WOVEN’s theme is generations of innovators, connecting a strong heritage with today’s innovative developments in industry, university research, a strong arts and crafts scene and the creative expression of the district’s rich and diverse communities.

Whilst a big festival event will happen in June every other year, there will also be long term projects and smaller events happening in between.

Key themes and projects, with highlights from WOVEN 2021

Exploring Creativity across Kirklees

This strand included unique textile artist commissions in Dewsbury, family focussed fun with a window trail through Huddersfield, and celebrations of our Growing Colour Together project that encourages growing, foraging and using household waste to make and create natural dyes.

You can also listen to I N T E R W O V E N, a unique soundscape of Kirklees’ mill heritage and present – a mixture of machinery, work, storytelling, brass music and boliyan.

Visitors could also jump on a train to see the Big Rainbow Knit installations at Huddersfield and Batley train stations, together with community-led yarn bombing across Kirklees.

WOVEN Together: Families and Young People

Working in partnership with Our Biennale – Children’s Festival, WOVEN welcomed families to have lots of fun together, explore the thriving textile industry on your doorstep and get creative with yarn. There were a series of live and online demonstrations, as well as the culmination of various projects that took place in schools during 2020 and 2021.

There were also drop in activities taking place around the Piazza Shopping centre for families and children of all ages. And an exhibition of large scale sculptures created by children and young people across Kirklees as part of Our Biennale and inspired by the Joanna Vasconcelos exhibition at Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Showcasing Textile Science and Innovation

DID YOU KNOW? Kirklees is home to some of the great innovations in textile science.

Textiles influence almost every part of our lives from medical textiles to climate change, our landscape and leisure!

WOVEN in 2021 showcased science and innovation in textiles with talks from The Space Shed, shining a light on all the incredible work happening behind the scenes in Kirklees that is inspiring the next generation of innovators.

Celebrating Participation

The final weekend of the festival was a celebration of two long term projects, The Big Rainbow Knit and Growing Colour Together.

The Big Rainbow Knit
On St George’s Square in Huddersfield there was a weekend of knitting themed fun. Browsing yarn stalls & displays, watching scaled-up craft demonstrations, and soaking up the atmosphere with roaming theatrics and buskers.

Growing Colour Together
At Ravensknowle Park you could find out more about how to make natural dyes from suitable plants and materials and how the dyes can be used in textile artworks and fashion. Our ambition is to build a network of ‘colour gardens’ across Kirklees, so sign up to the Growing Colour Together newsletter to help make that happen!