Fabric Installation: Weavers from Upper West, presented by Nubuke Foundation at 1:54- October 2023
The Nubuke Foundation presents a unique weaving event in Ghana.
‘Woori: A Festival of our Weaving Tradition’ returns to the township of Loho in the Upper West region of Ghana for the fifth time from 6 March to 30 June 2025. Now entering its fifth anniversary, the Woori Festival, organised by the Nubuke Foundation Centre for Textiles and Clay, has evolved from its initial focus on showing the dynamism within the handwoven traditions occurring in the Upper West to a vibrant festival that platforms skill exchanges, art exhibition, fashion show, poetry, food tastings and music performances and film screenings. This year’s festival is under the theme ‘The role of collaboration in harnessing the potential of weaving for socio-economic development’.
Notably, the festival date coincides with International Women’s Day, a reason to appreciate the weaving traditions of the Upper West and Ghana. We celebrate women as cultural preservers and bearers and the economic transforming role of weaving in the fortunes of their families, communities, and villages.
The festival responds to ‘Why Collaborate?’, a question posed by Austrian visual artist and Professor Barbara Putz-Plecko, who participated in the 2021- 2024 editions of the Woori Festival. Putz-Plecko urges us to pursue mutual learning.
In line with this proposition, the festival will feature a range of performative, process, and participatory contributions from Ghana, USA, Germany and Austria that explore mutual learning. For the first time, the festival will be held in three locations. The discursive, durational and performative aspects of the festival will occur from 6 to 9 March, 2025.
Artists Jemima Fordjour, Blanche Boni-Mississo, Emmanuel Aggrey Tieku, Simon Bowman Jnr, King David Osabutey, Fran Redeker, Dzidefo Amegatsey, and Enoch Laryea Nii-Adjei will present works from their textile and fibre practice. Some are focused on making art especially accessible to our public, with ideas and processes engaging with youth, children, the visually impaired, and the deaf community.
The exhibition will continue until the end of June 2025.
Highlights include:
Skill exchange workshops led by the University of Applied Arts, Vienna, will feature weavers from the Modern Traditional Cloth Weavers Association (Nadowli) and Tietaa Weavers Association (Nandom), all from the Upper West region. The workshop will focus on traditional and contemporary weaving techniques, sustainable practices, and innovative textile design. Visitors should expect to be engaged in hands-on workshops with weavers and artists using recycled plastics. The festival celebrates other creativity and innovation with poetry, music, performance, film, food, fashion and literature.
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