Wool Matters

Exploring the role of wool in the weaving of landscapes

This project is now archived and was part of DDW24

This project is part of
The Symbiocene Forest - Coexistence

Beatriz Isca

Wool embodies ways of living that run through generations, bonded to a landscape and a community. Focusing on the Dutch context, the project explores wool as a weaver of people, animals and land, searching for alternative values for wool that foster care and humbleness towards natural resources.

Through the local wool landscape

Not all wool is associated with a problematic industry, not all wool in the Netherlands is being burned, all the wool can have value. Every year, the wool produced by the sheep in the Netherlands is left without a clear destination, but grassroot initiatives are committed to save this wool from becoming waste and to put it back into circulation. As part of the Fibershed Nederland network, Beatriz travelled across the country to hear the stories and photograph the environments of farmers, artists, makers and processors that form the local wool landscape. Their perspectives were spun together in a book, as a visual and tactile exploration of the local wool journey(s). Inspired by the co-production between humans and nature intrinsic to craft and focused on inspiring the local community to actively take part, a pure woollen blanket was co-designed and co-produced in collaboration with Leidse Deken Foundation and local citizens. This blanket represents a meeting place between all the actors of the landscape. It’s called “A blanket to the soil”, to symbolize the ideal last stage in wool’s life.

Exploring wool as a system

Wool Matters is the master’s thesis project of the multidisciplinary designer Beatriz Isca. With a post-humanistic approach, the project explores wool as a system to understand the symbiotic relationships between people, animals and land. Aware of human and non-human actors in wool’s ecosystem, the designer engaged with different actors in the local wool landscape to uncover opportunities and address gaps. Handcrafts and material literacy are used as tools to open dialogues on the creation of a shared vision that connects all the actors and places the decision making on the hands of the local community.

Wool as gift from nature

The project works against western’s story of human exceptionalism that sees wool as a resource that exists only to serve human needs at any cost. It advocates for a shift in the ways we live, pushing us back to a natural rhythm. Wool is a gift from nature and a gentle reminder on how entangled we are from the other life forms around us.