We have been working hard behind the scenes on figuring out ways we can help the bring this community together and lift us all up! We started out with the Professional Weaver Podcast, and now that we have that rocking and rolling, we are setting our sights on other ways to support the community.
We would like to officially open a call for class and lectures that we can help you build, distribute, and sell. Read below to learn more about this call!
Let’s start off with, what’s the big idea here?
- We know times are hard and we want to give you, the professional weaver, teacher, historian, or industry adjacent professional a way to make up some of the lost income from these crazy times in which we are living.
The list below contains some general guidelines for class & lecture submissions:
- First and most important it should be a subject that you feel excited about.
- Something that you think would work well digitized. Though if you have an idea that your not sure of, please let us know, we would love to work with you to figure out a way to make it happen.
- The class should be geared towards a more advanced weaver, someone who has the basics and is looking to become a weaving professional or someone who is established in the field and looking to expand or update their depth of knowledge.
Now, let’s move on to topics, this is a hard one for us, we have included a list below of things that we think could be killer topics, but we are not averse to new or different ideas.
- Business Skills, hard & soft, marketing, photography, copy writing, billing, working with customers, creating workflows, how to calculate what something costs you, sourcing, approaching mills, etc.
- The Equipment We Use, it’s history, how to know if it’s right for you, how to maintain it, making smart decisions when purchasing new or used, etc.
- Dyeing, natural, synthetic, painting, vat, ikat, shibori, the possibilities are endless here…
- Materials, single material studies, natural, synthetic, characteristics, how they can be used in your weaving such as differential shrinkage, or over-spun for collapse, and on and on…
- History, different periods of weaving, how it was done, what tools were used, where in the world, was it impacted by socioeconomic or political factors, how were the materials used to meet the goals of the fiber being created, what were the goals?? So many interesting questions to be discussed here.
- Weaving Techniques! Last but not least, let’s get deep into planning, setup, tying on, structures, execution, finishing, fringing, hemming, loom controlled, hand manipulated and more.
- Have ideas that combine multiple topics? Cool, let us know!
Some things to think about…
- Is this a single topic, or would it work better if it was split into 2 or more classes/lectures?
- How long will it take to convey the information, would it work better as a class or as a lecture?
- How much time do you have to put towards executing this idea?
- Would it be helpful or informative to your professional weaving peers?
- Are there live/interactive elements?
- Would you like to include exercises or handouts?
- Pre-recorded videos, or on-line in-person, would you like to offer a class that is a set length of time where students can log in and interact with you and the other students, receive feedback, etc.
Let’s get down to brass tacks, what’s in it for you?
- We will be promoting and advertising your classes on our website, podcast, and social media outlets (and hope you will too) raising awareness for both you and the organization.
- We will be paying you a smaller amount than we want up front at least in the beginning, but giving you a large cut of the back end sales.
- We are all in this together, and we are looking to provide you with guidance and support with whatever parts of the process seem daunting or would stop you from executing something like this on your own. Are the tech aspects outside of your comfort zone? We’ve got you. Don’t know where to start with your outline? let us help! Don’t have a camera or lights? We will work with you to figure something out 🙂
Whats in it for us?
At this point were working hard to keep the lights on so we can carry out initiatives like this (and more to come in the future) that will help raise awareness for and shed light on all of the amazing handweavers that make our community so vibrant.