✨ Threads of Story — Woolcraft as a Language of Memory

An evening with Sarah Babiker, Trinity College Dublin
📅 15 October 2025

🌿 Introduction

Last night we gathered online for something quietly profound:
Threads of Story: Woolcraft ~ a Language & Memory between Ireland and the Arab World with Sarah Babiker (Trinity College Dublin).

Over thirty of us tuned in to listen, reflect and weave connections through words, fibre and story.
It was one of those rare evenings where academic insight met the intuitive understanding of makers — the feeling that our work with our hands carries something much older than ourselves.

🧶 What Sarah Shared

Sarah began with the act “to cut” — a gesture that separates yet begins, both an ending and a creation. From there, she took us through the language of fibre itself:
carding, spinning, weaving, and returning again to cutting, showing how these physical processes echo the cycles of storytelling and life.

She spoke of the wheel as a metaphor for time, of threads as language, and of hands as keepers of memory.
Each action in woolcraft, she suggested, can be read as a form of writing — a living archive of gestures, stories and meaning.

“Every act of making — cutting, spinning, weaving — carries meaning,” Sarah reflected. “It’s a movement between worlds, a way our hands remember.”

💬 Reflections from the Circle

Participants shared how the talk gave words to what many feel but rarely articulate — that craft, fibre and time are interwoven.
We spoke about the rhythm of making, the lineage of women’s work, and the idea that to create is also to remember.

It was a conversation that lingered long after the screen went dark — gentle, grounding and full of connection - I for one went home feeling enriched and touched. Often we loose ourselves in the financial world when making a living from crafting. This was a wonderful reminder, why we are doing what we are doing. 

🎥 Watch the Recording

For anyone who missed the event:

• Co~Lab Rooms members — the recording is now live inside the Co~Lab space.

• Ticket holders — available for three weeks in the ticketed event area.

💚 Thank you, Sarah, for such warmth and depth — and to everyone who joined for this memorable gathering.

🌿 Coming Up Next

This weekend marks the start of two wonderful courses inside the Academy:

• Wild Colour with Kari Cahill — an expressive, intuitive exploration of colour, pigment & artmaking.

• Professional Practice Toolkit — guidance and structure for artists and makers ready to grow their creative practice.