WOVEN is a biennial festival that began in 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.
Sign up to our mailing list below to be kept up to date on events and ways to get involved.
This strand of work 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.
I N T E R W O V E N became a recorded audio/visual experience for 2021, after a live performance as Woven Into Song in 2019. It is a unique soundscape of Kirklees’ mill heritage and present – a mixture of machinery, work, storytelling, brass music and boliyan.
In 2019 The Big Knit yarn bombed towns and villages across the district. It grew into the Big Rainbow Knit for 2021, with installations at Huddersfield and Batley train stations, together with community-led yarn bombing across Kirklees.
And we wouldn’t be WOVEN without the many individuals, community and industry partners who showcase their creativity by submitting events and activities to the programme. There are too many of you to list here, but we really couldn’t do this without you.
Working in partnership with Our Biennale – Children’s Festival, WOVEN in 2021 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 in Huddersfield 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.
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 2019 hosted the Future Fashion Challenge, with 15 schools and over 150 children designing the clothing of the future and then wearing their creations in a catwalk show at the University of Huddersfield.
In 2021 we 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, and how it is inspiring the next generation of innovators.
WOVEN is initiated by Kirklees Council, but owned by everyone, so participation is vitally important to us. However in the midst of 2021 Covid restrictions participation became very difficult. The final weekend of the festival was a celebration of two long term projects, The Big Rainbow Knit and Growing Colour Together.
On St George’s Square in Huddersfield there was a weekend of Big Rainbow Knit themed fun. Browsing yarn stalls & displays, watching scaled-up craft demonstrations, and soaking up the atmosphere with roaming theatrics and buskers.
At Ravensknowle Park you could experience the Growing Colour Together project and find out 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!
What is the Shoddy Factory? Come along to a FREE friendly and creative workshop to celebrate the past, present and future of textiles in Dewsbury. We are building a GIANT
We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced filmmaker to create visual content for an upcoming I N T E R W O V E N performance in Dewsbury. Deadline
INTERWOVEN is an ongoing project that is part of the wider WOVEN textile festival. It brings people together through music and storytelling, to celebrate our shared experiences of the textile
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