Weaving Bradford Differently Report of a 2012 Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship to India, Nepal, Indonesia … and Scotland. Rev Dr Barbara Glasson Team Leader, Touchstone Bradford.

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.

(TS Elliot Four Quartet)

In the following pages I have written a factual report, it says where I have been and what I have seen on an amazing journey, from India to Nepal, from Indonesia to Scotland during the course of my Winston Churchill travels.

Now, I have returned home, I will write the most important part of the story, what all this means for Bradford and for the possibilities that are unfolding here.

I work for Touchstone, a church-based community project, situated in one of the most deprived areas of Britain. Bradford comes near the bottom of almost all the indices of deprivation. And this reality is not simply statistics, it is reflected in people’s lives, prospects, expectations and ability to cope. Sometimes this feels a dispiriting and hopeless place to be yet I am surrounded by people with skills and spirit. In particular an Asian community that has skills in the textile industry, through sewing and weaving. When I embarked on the Churchill Travelling Fellowship I knew in my bones that there was a link between these skills and community development. It was something that I couldn’t articulate but was passionate to explore.

In the pages that follow, you will read of my encounters with weavers around the world. I saw models of good practice (and some bad too) I questioned what good leadership might be, how projects can develop to empower the poorest and the inherent link between culture, identity and creative expression. I realized that many of the issues we face in Bradford are being reflected in communities internationally and that there are some astonishing people working alongside struggling communities the world over to make things different.

As I have travelled I have not only admired people’s resourcefulness and skill, but I have also asked how we might claim this potential for Bradford. I have begun to realize that our ‘culture’ in this post industrial city is something quite remarkable. Rather than seeing us as disparate, dysfunctional communities that lead separate lives, I can see that our Bradford culture is in fact the interface between people that are different from each other. It is this interface that makes us special!

How could this interface of cultures be reflected creatively? What could we make at Touchstone that would represent this conversation different groups of people? This question has both troubled and challenged me. But then I thought of the Bradford Jacket!

Yorkshire farmers are currently giving their fleeces away for next to nothing. The only viable market is the Japanese need for futon filling. Meanwhile, Bradford has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the country (around 28%) Women of Asian origin, often without good English and subsequently confined to their homes, have extraordinary skills in sewing. Surely, these facts need to come together in some small scale enterprise. Not only to provide employment but to lift the heart of a community.

The Bradford Jacket is a simple and stylish creation, using undyed natural wool on the outside with a colourful silk or cotton lining made from Pakistani fabric. It is functional and colourful, simple but stylish, it is make from local and sustainable materials, and it employs local labour.

Could this dream be a reality?

Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, I have commissioned the very first prototype of a Bradford Jacket. The lining material comes from the Bombay Stores. The pattern is our own design. But at the moment the outer cloth has been bought because we have no serviceable weaving loom such as those I saw on the Isle of Harris …

But today, I have had a telephone call from a charitable trust wanting to sponsor the first Hattersley loom to return to Yorkshire since its manufacture up the road in Keighley. So maybe the dream could become a reality…!

Here’s how I got to see that we could ‘Weave Bradford Differently’!

My blog is on thewanderingweaver@wordpress.com

Weaving Bradford Differently introduction and rationale At the Threads of Life initiative in Bali one of the co-founders, William Ingrams, reflected with me that having answers is less important than travelling with the right questions. This journey has certainly taken me to many questions, whether they are the right ones or not depends on where they lead on returning to Bradford. But I want to write this report whilst still in Bali, still immersed in the questioning and still in a space that is uncluttered by the routine and commotion of the day job. I have been travelling in Asia for six weeks. My journey began in Bradford, a post industrial city in the North of the UK and from thence to the 48 degree temperatures of New Delhi. After a short night’s sleep, northwards, first by train for 7 hours and then by taxi for a further five hours, to the Panchachuli Women’s Cooperative in the foothills of the Himalayas.

Weaving with colloured cotton, Kumaon Province, North India Then I travelled East, taking an 18 seater plane to Pokhara in Nepal to stay with the Three Sisters Trekking company - guest house associated with a Women’s Empowerment project, training women to be Himalayan guides. Whilst there, I discovered two weaving cooperatives, one working in a small company on the outskirts of town, the other with a central shop but working with the Tibetan weavers in a local refugee camp.

Tibetan refugee children, Nepal (note the warp threads going right through the house!)

And so to Bali, to spend three weeks with Threads of Life in Ubud, to be ‘hands on’ with some batik and natural dyeing techniques, to learn more of ikot weaving and to share conversations with Jean and Willian Ingrams. The questions that I set out with revolve around Bradford, around its history of weaving and the diverse groups of people that have found their way to that city to work in the mills, I wonder how it might be possible to regenerate such a place which is known for its poverty, high rates of youth unemployment and tension between ethnic groups. I think of the women that come to Touchstone during the course of the year, some still without English, and to their children who search for identity in a post 9/11 world. And I wonder how, in the light of the collapse of this post industrial city, it might be possible to ‘weave Bradford differently’ Description of organisations visited All the organisations were initially contacted via websites, or face to face after arrival. In order to visit Panchachuli I had an intermittent e-mail conversation with its founder, Mukti Datta over a period of two years. The visit was set up more formerly once visas were secured. The journey took twelve hours by train and taxi. Accommodation was at a small guest house in Almora, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, with one of the managers of the organisation with whom it was possible to travel on the work bus with the other women from neighbouring villages.

Waiting for the works bus, Almora, north India Panchachuli weavers www.panchachuli.com is an organisation that produces top quality pashmina, shawls, blankets and fabric. It employs women from remote villages in this inaccessible region of India. Some travel into work each day, others work in the villages. There is a skills training programme that operates twice a year, women that show potential for spinning and weaving may subsequently be employed in the organisation. Under the leadership of Mukti Datta the organisation has grown from a local empowerment project into a successful international business. Whilst I was there an order had just been received from Timberland. The product is high quality, made from pashmina, lambs’ wool or nettle fibre and the production is low tech and time consuming. The yarn is handspun, the warp is wound on mechanical devices and the looms are traditional with a rope thrown shuttles. T

Spinning on wheels made from bicycles, Panchachuli, north India The product is sold either to the local elite or on the international market. The weaving tradition is not indigenous to this part of India but Master Weavers have been employed from Tibet to assist with pattern and design. The Master Weavers are all men, the weavers and spinners all women. The Three Sisters trekking organisation www.3sistersadventure.com in Nepal began as a guest house and expanded into training women to be Himalayan guides. This training not only encouraged local women to be equal to men in their knowledge of the Himalayan environment, but also enabled them to obtain a wide skills base and confidence that in turn enables them to move into other work. The three sisters themselves were unmarried siblings in a large and high class Nepalese family. They live close to the guest house and were hands on in its organisation and management. Other family members also participated as drivers, kitchen assistants and generally as part of the team.

The EWN (Empowering Women of Nepal) initiative had grown out of this work, with local schools and

clinics becoming part of the Three Sister’s work. So a successful business enterprise and a social

project worked together to empower women across the region and to inspire confidence. www.youtube.com/watch?y=abH3E1EwHuk

Weaving on a backstrap loom, Pokhara, Nepal Whilst in Pokhara I came cross two further women’s organisations concerned with empowering women through weaving. The first was the Women’s Skills Development Organisation (WSDO) www.womensskillsdevelopment.org which sold a high class product to tourists on Pokhara;s mains street. They worked from a small scale complex on the outskirts of the town, mainly weaving and sewing bags, purses and other small items. The other project, Women Weaving, (WW) worked with Tibetan refugees in the camps on the outskirts of the town. These women worked in their own homes and the fabric was bought by piece work. It was brought into a high street shop where it was made into simple bags and other colourful products. These were of a lower quality and price. Pokhara is a tourist town with many international visitors making it a first stop before trekking in the mountains. There was therefore a ready market for these lightweight products.

Selling woven products, Pokhara Nepal (the weavers are in the room at the back)

By contrast, Threads of Life in Bali www.threadsoflife.com was a more multilayered organisation. Beginning from an imperative to preserve hand weaving and dyeing techniques amongst the remote villages of many Indonesian islands, the Threads of Life organisation has a number of strands to its work. Firstly it buys very high quality woven textiles for sale in its Bali gallery. This work is valued for its complex weaving techniques, local dyeing knowledge and expert craftsmanship. The textiles are sourced by a team of field staff who visit the islands on a yearly or twice yearly basis and purchase the very best product at a high price. The Threads of Life gallery not only has these items for sale in Ubud, a popular Balinese tourist destination, but it also has educational material and lectures for those interested in the techniques used and the communities from which the textiles originate. Under the umbrella of Threads of Life is the Bebali Foundation www.ypbb.org The aim of this foundation is to incubate community business, encourage sustainable techniques to preserve the environmental balance of the forest and to preserve natural dye plants and to nurture traditional cultures through training, preservation of local knowledge and appropriate business skills.

The third ‘strand; of Threads of Life’s work is to help develop and sustain locally based cooperatives, giving indigenous communities business skills and confidence and enabling education and preservation of local traditions.

In short then, my trip took in five different enterprises with different styles of organisation and leadership. Panchachuli was a business started by one woman but now an international company. The Three Sisters ran a business with the express purpose of empowering women, from which the Enabling Women of Nepal organisation developed. The WSDO and WW projects of Pokhara were simple organisations working locally with disadvantaged women, particularly refugees from Tibet. Threads of Life is a multilayered organisation headed by a husband and wife team operating both as a successful business but also in empowerment and environmental initiatives in remote parts of Indonesia.

I also spent three days with Batiks Bali, a village based company run by a local village leader interested both in commerce and village development. He had also initiated his own microbanking system.

A trip like this gives small windows of insight into what is going on. I am more than aware that what I have seen and what I have learned are a personal reflection on small cameos of other people’s lives. So, rather than endeavour to analyse organisations structures I am going to take on some broad themes that have emerged for me in relation to the places that I have visited in the hope that these insights can inform my further thinking when I return to Bradford.

I have also learned and witnessed a number of practical skills and techniques which I have recounted in my blog thewanderingweaver@wordpress.com

Themes:

Sharing weaving skills with women at Panchachuli One of the things that particularly interested me was how these successful organisations and community projects started in the first place. This was of particular interest because I suspect that most enterprises in the Uk start in a different and more premeditated way and that it is within the voluntary sector that there is a different style of enterprise emerging. The environment in Nepal, India and Indonesia is refreshingly free of the regulations and stringency of the European environment so it was intriguing to see how enterprise emerged without these stringencies.

Spinning Pashmina from the Himalayas The story of Panchachuli is well rehearsed on the website so there is no need for me to reiterate it here. The initial vision grew out of a need within a particularly impoverished community and especially amongst people recovering from leprosy. The founder of the organisation, Mukti Datta, is a woman of considerable drive. She is the child of Indian and Belgian parents and as such is both part of the community and distant from it. She wears traditional Indian clothes with Gucci sunglasses. She has a degree from Oxford and lectureships at international universities. In conversation with Mukti it was clear that her drive and determination for women’s empowerment was a passion but it also drove her to court the international market and to produce top of the range goods. She expected excellence in the product and second best was not an option. She was not empowering women because she felt sorry for them, or because she expected others to feel sorry for them, she wanted to compete in the market with fabrics that were desirable to the elite.

In this respect Mukti was a bit of a surprise! I had expected a gentler and more engaging personality. On the contrary she was not particularly bothered about visitors from England. She made little time for us and was much preoccupied with her forthcoming international trip and contract with Timberland. As you will gather, I found this challenging!

Mukti’s organisation was now largely self funding. A weavers wage was approximately £40 a month, a very desirable income in this part of India. The work was labour intensive, a skilled weaver could produce one ‘piece’ in a day but that would not take into account the spinning, warp winding or loom dressing that preceded it. A small scarf would sell for £5, a large blanket for £100. Clearly the enterprise was relying on the differential between Asian and Western exchange rates to finance it as a going concern, an option not open to us in the West except if we produced something for the fashion houses of New York!

A product to please a Western market – Panchachuli Muktii’s company had grown through a diligent sourcing of natural resources – pashmina and nettles from the mountains – and the employment of ‘Master Weavers’ from Tibet with their indigenous knowledge of techniques and design.

Handwritten labels to ‘personalise’ the product In its early days it had also been supported by grants from the Danni Kaye foundation. It was not clear whether these were still in place A US organisation NEST had made a recent visit to Panchachuli and two of its field workers remained with the intention of introducing the organisation to international markets as well as giving help with infrastructure eg they were promising to provide a colour printer and to give help with the website. However it was noticeable that NEST was more welcome when introducing markets and was getting little cooperation on its other offers of help.

One of the few men weaving – he is deaf and a leprosy survivor. He is ‘mending’ the cloth I found myself having mixed feelings about this. Firstly a sense of anger at the blocking of possible help. But secondly a sort of secret regard for the independence of the organisation’s head! I had thought that Panchachuli would show me the way that women could run an organisation differently from a man. My overall reflection was that I was witnessing a sort of female patriarchy. It was interesting, then to be in Nepal a week later and to experience something completely difference. Unlike the visit to Panchachuli, the Three Sisters Trekking company was a model of hospitality. I was welcomed into the heart of the organisation and given time to listen to the story of how this successful business and associated social enterprise had emerged.

Cotton weaving in Nepal The sisters were three unmarried siblings, which in itself is unusual in Nepal. They are Nepalese, from a high class family, and grew up in Darjeeling. Their parents were adamant that girls should take their place in society and ensure good education and possibilities for the sisters. It is not quite clear how the guest house first started, but what became clear to the sisters is that there was a particular niche within the business. Seeing the niche, the need for women travellers often travelling alone, to be accompanied by women guides, caused the sisters to locate women in the villages who could use their indigenous skills to take people into the mountains.

Nepalese woman at a rice planting ceremony So, the Three Sisters Trekking company was formed, with the provision of a guest house base but with the possibility for women to use indigenous skills in mountain trekking. The sisters then realised that this needed an educational input so that the young women they were training had sufficient use of English and first aid and interpersonal relationships to lead international guests safely in such challenging terrain. From the educational classes emerged other needs. Some of the women had children so needed child care, others needed health provision and so the social enterprise work of the EWN emerged under the management of the eldest sister. The extended family lived in a house adjacent to the guest house with many other members providing transport, cooking and other facilities. But the power within the family clearly lay with the women and the intention was that other women should be empowered and move on into whatever employment best suited them with the new skills and confidence they had obtained through their trekking experiences.

Winding the dyed cotton - Nepal I didn’t get many insights into how the weaving organisations had started in Pokhara but they were clearly motivated from a need that had come to the doorstep. One was working particularly with local women who had been divorced or were victims of domestic violence and therefore excluded from their families The other was working in the Tibetan refugee campse where means were slender and men often absent or as good as absent. Clearly from that cam personal concern for the women and on one occasion the shopkeeper was going to accompany a member of staff to Kathmamdu, a journey of some 5 hours, in order to get an appointment with a gynaecologist. This trip would be financed by the cooperative. Because I spent a longer time in Bali I was able to get more insight into the starting of Threads of Life. Jean Howe and William Ingram had been involved in the tourist industry in Bali and surrounding islands and perceived a problem with the weavers following the economic crash that hit those islands. The weavers were faced with selling their heirlooms, namely the precious fabrics that were used in family ceremonies. These textiles were not simply precious in their own right but the techniques by which they were woven and in particular the processes and sources of the natural dyes involved were also in jeopardy.

Jean and Williams passion that this knowledge should not be lost was combined with a Western eye to the market (Jean is American, William from the UK) and they saw the possibility of buying the village

weavers some time whilst they continued with their weaving. This ability of an ‘outsider’ to see a need and enable the empowerment of others is a common them in this journey. In William and Jean’s case this has been an economic enterprise, buying top quality, naturally dyed products at a good price for villagers and selling them at a 200% mark up in the textile gallery in Ubud. But this profit making business has fed back into the local communities by enabling weavers to continue their heritage of textile making, dyeing and cultural and religious practices.

Woman making a supplementary weft pattern, Bali From this, the Bebali Foudnation has emerged and this an educational, charitable and research arm for Threads of Life. This is partly funded by the Ford Foundation and has attracted interested from Kew Gardens who are working in partnership to preserve the flora that upholds this traditional way of life. In particular this work is in relation to management of forests and the indigenous dye plants that are involved in the Indonesian weaving processes .

But key to the Threads of Life project has been an ethos of trust which has meant a long term commitment to local communities. Threads of Life has had to earn its credentials by being a long term player in local areas, not like the many hit and run initiatives that come and go in Indonesia. This ethos of mutuality and trust has encouraged and enabled local cooperatives to emerge which bring microfinance, educational possibilities and provide other basic needs to isolated communities. The

Threads of Life fieldworkers not only buy textiles but they also encourage and enable these cooperatives to flourish. So, in each of the organisations I visited I found an organic growth of an organisation. In each case it began with a need and responded to it. The response in each instance was quite different, but consistently had an eye to funding and resourcing. From this perceived need I saw that social concerns emerged and were addressed in different ways, from the ‘let the women earn and make their own choices ‘ style of Panchachuli, to the cooperatives of Threads of Life. It as encouraging to see organisations that combined passion and empowerment with quality products and a sense of pride in tradition and culture. I admired the passion and resolve of all these organisations and their leaders. I also had some questions! Leadership I suppose tit is inevitable that these encounters have led me to reflect on leadership styles and how they enable or disable. After all I am myself in a leadership role and endeavouring for it to be a source of empowerment for others whilst aware of the pitfalls of trying to be a visionary and entrepreneur. As I have already mentioned, I found the seemingly autocratic leadership at Panchachuli to be rather challenging. Maybe this inevitable when a single person drives a project forward. It is a successful model but not necessarily empowering. Maybe this is to be over critical. The women weavers I met were certainly being empowered by their regular income, their social interactions and their sense of a quality product well made. My concern lies around models of leadership that are not necessarily good management. We may just have met Mukti on a bad week, certainly it was extremely hot and the monsoons were overdue, she had visitors from Timberland as well as from Nest. But it seemed evident that there was an autocratic regime that centred around one person. And although she was at pains to prove that the organisation was no longer dependent on her and could function very well on its own, when she wasn’t around there seemed to be a lack of clear focus and direction.

Indigenous patterns of indonesia In the case of the Sisters it was possible to see a more benevolent autocracy, but clearly it was an autocracy. The family had the power, the vision and indeed the motivation to fight the battles and take the work forward. The sisters had had some battles too, particularly gender related within patriarchal expectations. They spoke of the local papers branding them as witches and of struggles with authorities because of them being three women together. They did however embody a relational style of leadership. They were clear to say that they didn’t always agree and sometimes would need to thrash things out between them for a week or so before making a decision. When I asked how they handled

disagreements they smiled and said ‘We sit down and eat together’. I guess this is quite a liberating type of board meeting! At Threads of Life I experienced a visionary leadership shared in a husband and wife team. This also had some dilemmas associated with it. I asked William who he turned to as a mentor or to check out accountability and it appeared to generate a new thought. Having said this Jean and William were keen to articulate that Threads of lLife was successful because it had taken time and put energy into establishing trust both with its staff and with its village cooperative communities. When it came to setting prices for textiles and deciding which to buy then this was negotiated with the village communities together and in dialogue. There was a sense of team in the Threads of Life office and a high sense of value associated with the work. Some staff had been sent to Kew for further training and there was an honouring of local knowledge and indigenous culture. From this range of experiences I learned that good leadership needs a clear and focussed vision, a passion that drives a project forward, a single minded determination to prevail against all the odds. At the same time there is a need to keep people alongside, to have wise heads around that can challenge or re-focus. Visionaries are not always good team players and collaborative workers can lack drive. The combination of these skills probably doesn’t lie in one person, but leadership probably needs to be focussed in a very close small team, be it husband and wife or three sisters together. And this vision, whilst needing to be financially sustainable, needs also to keep an eye back to the communities it is endeavouring to empower, And this eye back must be both self critical and gracious.

Weaving on a backstrap loom – village family Bali Excellence and Elites If I was a school teacher I would be the sort that would give B+ for ‘trying very hard’! This is not the ethos that I encountered in these successful organisations. On the contrary I experienced a culture of excellence, the need to produce quality stuff for a top end market. But this doesn’t mean it was consistently hard nosed. On the whole there was an expectation of quality so that something else could happen. An interesting conversation with the Threads of Life staff indicated that although they were only interested in the top end of the textile market, natural dyes, traditional patterns, double ikot or songet weaving, they also had an eye to the weavers that didn’t quite make the grade. They had branched out into purchasing lower quality weaving for making into cushions or clove sachets. However

there was a clear differential between these goods and the top range product so that quality didn’t slip across the board. The simpler and more straightforward commodities produced in Nepal were competing with a range of manufactured goods for a fairly undiscerning market. Whereas Panchachuli were heading for the very top end and limiting production in order to maintain quality. It has to be said that I had more resonance with the low end, hands on, simple weavers of Nepal than with the highly skilled production of Panchachuli, but I am not a capitalist by disposition and was probably not destined for management! My fear is that excellence leads to elitism, that the very act of empowering some, disempowers others. So I was glad when a friend of mine gave me the phrase ‘fair commerce’ It has also made me think about what I am now going to call ‘Church fair syndrome’ whereby a lot of very earnest people use an awful lot of effort making a lot of stuff nobody wants but buy anyway at less than cost price. Somewhere between this and manufacturing expensive shawls for celebrities ust lie a land of fair commerce where local skills, enterprise and excellence are honoured and encouraged. We are used to capitalism being at the expense of community but this journey has caused me to wonder how the two could be held together. I have come closest to a model that might work in the people at Threads of Life, although it has necessitated a separation of the work into three strands, commercial, management of resources and local cooperation. But the combination of these three motifs could be a viable way to think about how the flow of empowerment can continue to be with those who are most vulnerable to the very forces of capitalism on which they depend.

Skills, traditions and cultures Panchachuli brought weaving skills across the border from Tibet to enable the indigenous women of North India to learn and make a living. Their production was on large looms of a western style, their wool carding machine was from Bradford! The Three Sisters claimed the skills that were already present in local communities and refocused them for women, formerly only men became mountain guides. The weaving cooperatives of Pokhara worked with immigrant populations to encourage their indigenous skills and small scale production. At Threads of Life, the specialist techniques of weaving and natural dyeing were saved as heirlooms of remote communities for whom these textiles provided a connection with ancestors faith and cultural traditions. In some ways the work of Threads of Life is more retrospective than that of the other organisations. It is endeavouring to keep traditions as social and

faith capital and honouring inherited customs and belief systems.

So this begs the question as to whether ‘empowerment’ necessarily means ‘progress’? Empowerment Empowerment is a word that I have used liberally in this report up to now. It implies that those with power wish to share it with those without, that they seek for others the power that they enjoy or that they desire people who have been disempowered to have the wherewith all to flourish. One of the questions that I have rubbed up against is whether, in order for others to flourish, the visionary leader must relinquish power. My hunch is that the reconfiguring of power sometimes empowers all. The danger is that in empowering some, those with power gain more power so that the differentials are not levelled but widened. This draws me towards the dynamic between compassion, passion and belief. It is a tangle I can’t yet unpick but feels important, as if the words have a certain elastic between them which needs to stretch and pull but must not be broken. In all the organisations I have visited I have heard of an imperative of compassion. Be it for the Indonesian artisans that were losing their heirlooms or the women consigned to heavy manual labour in the infertile fields of Nepal. In each instance there has been a stirring of compassion, a recognition that ‘the other’ has a shared humanity, needs for growth and fulfilment and the potential for change. This compassionate response awakens a passion, a fervour, a drive to enable change. And this passionate drive pushes people into leadership roles at a cost to themselves and for their bank balance. In every organisation I visited, this passion and compassion was fired by a belief system, a set of values that gave both energy and stability. This was not necessarily a conventional allegiance to a formal religion, but rather the acceptance of a value system that was seen to operate at a human level and give life giving interactions to all.

Jean Howe described this as the reciprocity of trust and gratitude. The trustworthy stance that she embodied within her organisation was key to its long term success. Threads of Life were not simply another aid organisation coming for the short term, they were a reputable and recognisable company who were to be trusted long term. This in turn engendered an ethos of trust and participation which was informed by gratitude, not in a subservient way, but rather as partners in an enterprise in which all were set to gain.

Making indigo dye in Bali This intentional interaction, the working out of the dynamic between trust and gratitude, the balance of power may be most problematic to those of us who live with the legacy and guilt of a colonial past. We want to resist cycles of dependency and are fearful of being seen as both rich and wealthy and potentially exploitative. In this we walk through treacherous waters! Threads of life had a number of strategies to manage these dynamics such as an acquaintance of the English speakers with Balinese, the employment of local field workers to converse in local languages, the involvement of producers in price setting and quality control. This commitment and dedicated life style was impressive wherever I met it but I was also aware that these entrepreneurs carried heavy responsibility. They had to span the gap between the local producers, villages and fragile communities with whom they engaged, and the markets and grant makers of the West.

Dyed cotton Whilst at Threads of Life the grant for future work had been held up in a bureaucratic bottle neck and this not only meant a radical rescheduling of future work but also put a very immediate stress on the organisation for cash flow. This responsibility lies with the leadership and such stresses can be exhausting. Continually making the case to funders that a piece of work is worthwhile, not being penalised for being ‘successful’ and trying to justify a rationale for an organisations work becomes a massive piece of work in itself. Skills, traditions, cultures Everywhere I went I experienced the interplay of skills, traditions and cultures. In particular I saw the mix of local indigenous cultures and Western influence, through tourism or through currency differences. At Panchachuli I saw the import of another culture, through the skills of the Tibetan master weavers. In Pokhara I saw the Tibetan women bringing their own skills to weave bags and purses for the tourist trade. I saw the 3 sisters wrestling with their own cultural mores in order to be a successful women led company. And at Threads of Life I saw the traditional skills of Ikot and Songket weaving being encouraged in small scale enterprise but marketed to the Western tourists of Ubud. All these organisations live with some massive questions. What if the crash in the Western economies stops tourism? What if local communities seek commercial rather than indigenous development? What if the elites are no longer prepared to pay the added value of local craftsmanship? What if the funders cease to bridge the gap between income and staff costs? What happens when the present visionary leaders are weary and need to pass things on? And many more questions besides. In conversation with Jean Howe, she spoke of the balance between the Balinese disposition to live for the moment and take things as they come, and the western pressures to plan and have contingencies. Holding this balance, indeed embodying it, is a challenging task on a daily basis Confidence One of the words that keeps surfacing through this journey is that of ‘confidence’. Maybe I have noticed it particularly because I am a person of faith and working in the context of community empowerment. The word ‘confidence’ means to have a strong faith in something or someone. And this is what I have witness in all the organisations I have visited. I have seen visionary leaders who have had sufficient self confident to act on their passions. I have heard of the struggles they continually face and the opposition that has resisted progress, both locally and politically. I have not always admired their personalities, but I respect the journeys they have made and the sacrifices they have experienced. I have seen enterprises that have gone on to give others confidence. The 3 sisters tell many stories of young women who started as guides and have, through the education and language skills they obtained, gone on to other education or good jobs. I saw the delight in the faces of the sisters as they told these stories. I have listened to William Ingram tell of the purchase of textiles in remote villages, where women consult the ancestors to see if a sae is possible or not. How he has sat to wait the verdict, which is invariably ‘yes’! I have seen how this respectful waiting has given the village women confidence that their culture and integrity is respected and honoured. And I sense a new confidence in myself to ‘have a go’ in Bradford!

Postscript The final stage of my journey, although not officially part of my Fellowship, was to visit Scotland and in particular the weaving on Harris and Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. I spent a week at the end of August, visiting weavers in their own homes and also a small but international enterprise called Breanish Weavers. I crossed a loch to a remote community that weave in their own homes, Scarraig weavers, and I visited the mill where the wool is processed and tweed exported.

The ferry to Stornoway The most exciting thing about this part of the journey was to find Hattersley looms to be an essential part of the weaver’s ‘kit’ for Harris tweed – and these looms were manufactured in Keighley, Bradford!

So it feels as if the journey has come full circle.

I have issued a press release in the Stornoway Gazette to see if anyone knows of a Hattersley loom that would like to come ‘home’. And I have commissioned a local woman to create two ‘Bradford jackets’ made from Yorkshire wool and Pakistani silk. I hope that I will be able to talk with someone from the Rank Foundation as to how we can take this vision forward in Bradford. I have learned a lot on my travels and am inspired to take a small enterprise forward in the new Touchstone building. Thank you Winston Churchill Travelling Fellowship putting your faith in me to make this Journey!

Stretch your arms out Winston, I will make you a Bradford jacket!