SNF partners from three countries collaborate to document weaving traditions near Vamvakou

On the slopes of Mount Parnon in Greece’s Peloponnese, the Women’s Weaving Collective of Geraki is keeping alive age-old textile traditions. A group of graduate students from the University of California, Los Angeles, Simon Fraser University (SFU), and the University of British Columbia recently arrived to study and document their craft, one now nearly extinct in Greece.

Over the course of three weeks, the participants conducted interviews with the weavers, took photographs cataloguing woven carpets and decorative patterns at nearby churches, planned for short animated films about the village’s weaving practices, recorded weaving-related local songs, and more.

The students’ home base was the nearby village of Vamvakou, where they were hosted by the Vamvakou Revival team. The program took place as part of the Gefyra (“Bridge”) partnership supported by the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) between the SNF Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture at UCLA and the SNF Center for Hellenic Studies at SFU and with the assistance of SFU’s SNF New Media Lab.

Other recent SNF grants have helped students carry on traditional Greek approaches to marble carving and artists take a decidedly less traditional approach to weaving—both on the island of Tinos.