Tales from a Weavershed

Riverside MillThe Wheel RoomExhibitionGMI

26 Dec

Written By Laura Wasley

A Green Maker Initiative Mini Maker Showcase

2 May - 20 June 2026

The Wheel Room

Tales from a Weavershed

This book shares the stories of five creative journeys, from the beaches of South Wales to the woodlands of South Cornwall. Deriving from watershed and fibreshed, ‘weavershed’ has been coined for this book to represent a local ecosystem of resources and production, with weaving practices at its centre.

Musing on the west and the weft, these pages were formed from the gathering of photographs, conversations, sketchbook pages and portraits. Weaving, here, is not restricted to the loom; instead, it acts as a delicious representation of all that textiles can hold.

You are invited to step into the Weavershed, to look at the structures of these pieces or the clothes on your body beyond their physicality, to meditate on these paths of knowledge, and let landscapes become looms.

This mini showcase has been curated by the creator of Tales from a Weavershed, Zoë Irving, a Pledged Green Maker and Photojournalism graduate of Falmouth University.

About Zoë

I’m Zoë, a visual storyteller based between Cornwall and The Lake District, working across photography and filmmaking.

Having been fortunate enough to grow up roaming these wild landscapes has really influenced the softness to my storytelling.

My work has become rooted in communicating land-based practices and exploring webs of sustainability within the textile world. I am fascinated by how farming and attitudes to fashion can become regenerative and have been exploring this through recent work. Examples include Fibre, a short documentary that was made in partnership with Cornish wool spinners, and Tales from a Weavershed, a self-published book that meditates on woven creative journeys. Recently, my photography practices have even extended to my own textile exploration as a self-taught sewer and fibre artist. This resulted in the Zinnia jacket, which I hand quilted using only scrap materials and raw waste wool.

Feeling constantly inspired by ideas of deep ecology, it has become inherent to me that true sustainability requires more than just material choices.

My hope is that these practices will contribute to the reframing of textile and agricultural spaces as one interdependent, living system.

Website:zoeirv.com/tales-from-a-weavershed