‘An example of how a community can make something happen’
In the latest edition of Sheeks Aboot Shetland, hosts Pete Bevington and Jane Moncrieff speak those involved with Shetland Wool Week and find out more about its success
Perhaps it’s in the nature of knitting itself that makes Shetland Wool Week such a success, pulling together different yarns of different colours to create a thing of beauty…and practicality – after all, we can wear the hats, scarves and jumpers that come out of the process, writes Pete Bevington.
“It’s an example of how a community can come together and make something happen,” this year’s patron Helen Robertson stated in the latest Sheeks Aboot Shetland published on YouTube by The Shetland Podcast. “And it’s a very happy festival,” added the event’s chief organiser, Shetland Amenity Trust culture and heritage manager Jacqui Birnie
It is indeed, with a thousand knitters from “aa da erts” unable to take the smiles off their faces for the entire last week of September when this 17 year old festival takes place.
Shetland Wool Week is an extraordinary example of this community at its best, folk – mostly women, it has to be said – working together to create seven (soon to be nine) days of magic for the enthusiastic visitors that flock back year after year for another taste of the authentic knitwear experience the festival gives them.
Shetland’s humble knitters who have been upholding the heritage created over centuries of hardship by their forebears are treated like rock stars, with Helen likening it to The Rolling Stones going to America and meeting their blues heroes, like Muddy Waters. “We’re standing on the shoulders of giants,” she said.
The key to the festival’s success is “collaboration”. Shetland Amenity Trust and the museum work with Shetland Wool Brokers Jamieson & Smith to organise the event, collaborating with Shetland Arts at Mareel next door, and most especially with the folk, again mostly women, running the local halls and providing the “homebakes, soups, teas, bannocks and goodness knows what else” that add to the authenticity of the uniquely Shetland experience.
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There are exhibitions, classes and all kinds of events celebrating Shetland’s culture and community and people absolutely love it, with some even describing it as a “pilgrimage”. So great is the interest that the organisers are planning to add an online version of the festival to accommodate the growing number of people unable to attend what may be the world’s biggest wool-related event of its kind.
Not only that, it brings in millions of pounds to the local economy and has helped to spawn no less than 13 new wool producers and several new design companies, and rescued one of Shetland’s fundamental industry’s from decline. After all, it’s not that long ago that the fleeces were being burnt in the last week of September!
Which brings us to a strange anomaly that cannot be ignored.
While the festival has no doubt reversed the industry’s decline, brought hand-knitting back to the fore and rescued Shetland lace from potential extinction, the islands are now screaming out for machine knitters, the irony being that half a century ago there was a fear the knitting machine would be the death knell of hand knitting itself!
This “conversation oot o da box” revealed the fact that while loads of people want to learn machine knitting, and knitwear firms are desperate for machine knitters, there are no courses available locally. Not only that but Shetland College/University of the Highlands and Islands had to scrap their textile degree course due to lack of interest.
Jacqui and Helen explained that the college used to run a two week vocational course for machine knitting, but closed it down and now there are rooms full of state-of-the-art equipment lying unused and taking up space at the Gremista campus, when what is actually needed is a series of short courses to help with all aspects of the craft.
As Jacqui said: “Somebody needs to yoke a haad o it…it’s no rocket science, bairns.” She hopes a study of the real economic impact Shetland Wool Week has will help bring that about, but again this highlights a problem that besets these isles: lack of collaboration between different organisations and departments and the absence of genuine consultation with the people on the ground, the grass roots, which ultimately bores down to poor communication.
So…let the (mostly) women of Shetland Wool Week set an example to the wider community about how to make a success of things, work together as a team and create a brighter, more colourful future for these incredible islands which have so much to offer the world.
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