The Warp and the Weft R&D Day 2
Today was the second R&D workshop for The Warp and The Weft – after digging out my old tartan trousers from my wardrobe and downing a delicious coffee, I cycled into the studio eager to see where the threads would take us next.
Over the course of the session we rediscovered movement conversations, raised our voices and delved into what loneliness and community means to us all now. What unfolded was a beautiful quilt of stories about isolation, connection, and community!
Arriving Through the Body
We opened with a physical check-in, using movement as a means of greeting. This time we played with dimensions, seeing how we can find instincts to explore the dimensions and then use these in conversation to play with story and narrative. We found that taking our impulses from each other was the most important part of creating a conversation, and this helped us work much more in sync with each other. This playful activity invited openness and connection, warming us up gently and reminding us that movement can be as much about listening to the body and playing as it is about performing.
A Waulking Wednesday!
We then went on to learn about the Scottish practice of waulking — the final stage in making tweed, where a group of women would sit around a table and rhythmically beat the cloth to soften and shrink it. This could take hours, so they sang together to keep the rhythm and pass the time - one leading the verses, the rest joining in on the chorus - as well as sharing stories and gossip. We discussed how important this sense of community must have been for women who would have otherwise been living very isolated lives, and how this may have been their only opportunity to connect with each other away from male spaces.
From Loneliness to warmth
The first thematic layer we explored was loneliness. I have been thinking a lot about loneliness recently, when and why we feel loneliness and what it means to feel lonely in this new digital world. To begin exploring this, we did some free writing on what it meant to us to be lonely and when those feels struck us most. Following this, we then focused on one instance of that lonely feeling and tried to find it in the body, centring in on what body part it might live in, and from there developing the quality of movement that feeling evokes, until we each found a gesture to embody our own individual brand of loneliness. We then turned our minds to secrets we held, wrote on these, and then embodied them. Finally, we thought about and moved through a piece of fabric we have known which made us feel warm and at home - something reminiscent of tweed.
Waulking Circle
Returning to the tradition of waulking, we began learning a waulking song together (after a few very silly vocal warm-ups!). Using call and response, we picked up the rhythm and structure of the song, then layered it with the movements we had devised. As someone sang the call and performed their movement — whether drawn from loneliness, secrecy, or warmth — the group sang the response and repeated their gesture back to them.
This was a particularly moving part of the workshop, as we watched each other share something personal and then have that feeling or secret be held by the group in response.
“The moment we sang together, it felt like everything came into focus.”
We then began to develop our own lyrics to add in the song to layer over the movement we had created, but time was not on our side and we had to cut this off early! We were really excited about what was starting to be created along this path.
Final Reflections
This second workshop pushed our exploration deeper into the communities once built around textile work - and how much of that collective rhythm and mutual support is missing in our isolated digital lives. We moved together, sang together, and, through that, found a shared sense of something bigger than ourselves.
Some quotes from reflecting on the day:
“It reminds you—it’s not all me. It’s not just me.”
“There’s something really grounding about reflecting on your own life… and then making something shared from that.”
“it feels almost like something that you know. I don't know how but it's familiar…”
“it takes you out of the rat race”
For future iterations, I’m really excited to see what happens with a larger group — finding that sweet spot in the number of participants where it still feels like a collective, while also allowing space for individual focus. Additionally, we felt it would be valuable to spend more time learning the song and practising the original movements of waulking before moving into something more theatrical or abstracted. I’m also now on the hunt for some tweed to bring in and waulk with properly during the workshop — so if you’ve got any lying around, you know who to call!
See you tomorrow!
Izzy
