At about 4pm on Tuesday afternoon, a group of people gathered in a brightly lit room in The Liberties to practice Alool weaving, a form rooted in nomadic Somali tradition, The Journal reported.
The project, called Common Threads, uses waste wool from sources like Botanic Weavers, Avoca Handweavers, and Foxford Woolen Mills to create colorful walls for a temporary living room. Saada Osman, a Somali woman and community organizer from Sheffield, led the weaving as traffic passed outside the glass windows.
“And then we can do the different things inside the living room,” said Osman, taking a short break from the work. “We can do different workshops – the artist workshops, storytelling, singing, eating food. Yeah, so it’s now like a gathering place for the people, somewhere to stay.”
The three-day gentle festival of welcome was brought to the National College of Art and Design gallery space by artist Jennie Moran. Moran worked for years running the NCAD café called Luncheonette and currently undertakes a residency at NCAD Field.
“I am always talking about hospitality not as an industry or not as anything related to hotels… but this crazy ill-advised system that humans in every single corner of the earth have created for welcoming strangers,” Moran told The Journal.
Common Threads is being held outside of Sheffield for the first time. Malaika Cunningham, artistic director with The Bare Project, noted the unique nature of the public interaction.
“There is something special about moments in the city centre that are not about buying something,” Cunningham said.
“Yeah, pure joy,” Moran said of the Dublin experience so far.
As the event concluded, Traveller storyteller Oein de Bhardún sat in the center of the space to share stories from his own nomadic tradition.
