Oloop Well-being: Textile Communities as Spaces of Power

Workshop on making textile dolls - an experience of a temporary textile community and a discussion about textile communities with Zala Orel and Jasmina Ferček (Oloop collective).

We invite women of different ages and cultural-social backgrounds to a creative meeting that will offer a gentle, safe, loving, and healing process in which we will make dolls from textiles.

At the event, the authors of the manual "Textile Communities as Spaces of Power" will intertwine textile creation with a discussion about its effects. Handcrafting will be connected with presenting the findings of research on international and Slovenian best practices in community textile creation.

Participants are asked to bring a piece of thin, light-colored, plain cotton fabric cut into a circle with a diameter of 40 cm. The fabric can be cut from an old sheet or something similar. It can have special significance or memories for the participant. Additionally, they should bring some cotton wool, which will be used for stuffing.

The event is free of charge; however, registration is recommended for easier coordination.

BIEN Textile Culture is a partnership between two non-governmental organizations, Zavod Carnica from Kranj and Zavod Oloop from Ljubljana. The goals of the program are to strengthen knowledge and practices among individuals from the non-governmental, research, educational, and care environments; to inform policymakers and the public about the beneficial effects of group textile handcrafting; and to fill research gaps in the social significance and effects of textile creation as psychosocial support at the Slovenian and international levels. It is supported by the ACF program in Slovenia 2014–2021.

About mentors:

Jasmina Ferček is a textile artist and holds a master's degree in art therapy. Through conversations with women, she explores the significance of their creative experiences with textiles. She has been working in the field of participatory and psychosocially supportive textile art within the Oloop collective for 20 years. She researched the impact of textile creation on women's well-being and health in her master's thesis, and in 2022, she wrote a book on the subject titled "The Power of Textiles." She is a member of the Slovenian Association of Art Therapists (SZUT) and the European Federation of Art Therapy (EFAT).

Zala Orel holds a Master's degree in Communication Studies and is a doctoral candidate in Social Geography and Regional Development at Charles University in Prague. Since 2014, she has been responsible for the artistic vision and development of cultural programs at Zavod Carnica and Layer House. In 2019, she founded BIEN, the Biennial of Textile Art, which takes place in Kranj, Škofja Loka, Jesenice, and Nova Gorica. BIEN is becoming a central platform for presenting contemporary textile art and a space for exploring the social impacts of textile creation.

The O2OOP exhibition and accompanying events were created in co-production with the Rog Center and the Biennial of Textile Art BIEN (Zavod Carnica) and with financial support from the Municipality of Ljubljana (MOL) and the ACF Program (in Slovenia 2014-2021).