Tuesday 16 August 2016

The ICA Kildare Yarn Bomb

It all started in January 2016. I'm part of small group of women, an ICA guild, many of whom, at the time, did not know how knit. Forget socks or jumpers, we decided to Yarn Bomb a park in Newbridge. We'd bring colour to the town and teaching ourselves a new skill at the same time.

I first came across Yarn Bombing many years ago in New York. Someone had left a knitted bicycle on the sidewalk on Wall Street. Though considered graffitti, there is nothing remotely offensive or alarming about covering everyday objects in wool. Quite the opposite. The woolly street art has a comforting effect on passers by.

Of course the Linear Park in Newbridge is large and soon we discovered that with over 40 pine trees to cover, we'd need more help. That's when the real fun started. We contacted local schools in the town. Teachers were happy to come on board and when the children heard that they were taking part in a street art project, they thought it was pretty cool too. Rita Nugent, one of the local teachers, wanted the tree nearest her school so that all the children would see it on the way to school.

But the reality of a whole park meant that we had to involve even more people - especially the seriously skilled knitters in Newbidge. We went into community groups. The first, the Dara Park Family Resoucre Centre, turned out to be home to some amazingly talented women.

The 'Golden Girls' meet up weekly and  happy to get involved as long as they could take on a bicycle. Another group at the centre came to the park and picked out their own tree to yarn bomb. It was the biggest but they were not put off, even by it's awkward shape.

The library is home to the Stitch and Sew group. They meet on a Thursday and look out on to the park from their meeting place. They wanted to most awkward tree, it has loads of gnarly branches but amongst them, they had a dream team of crochet and knitting artists. Because, despite what the art councils around the world say, I believe that knitting and crochet is an art form and everyone involved is an artist.

Not only did we have a whole town knitting, we soon had a convent of nuns at it too. The Sisters of the Holy Family got involved. Sister Columba made colourful crocheted hats that another volunteer took and turned into flower bells. Several others knitted squares which another volunteer sewed into a blanket to wrap around a tree. Whilst many of them didn't understand what they were knitting for, they were happy to be taking part in the community project.

It took four months to bring everything together. Some people walked down to the park and picked out their own tree, others made blankets and we collected them beforehand. The set up date was June 1st and everybody was invited to help stage the installation. School children came down and put theirs up along with the Dara Park team. When it was all done, the sisters from the convent came down, many in wheelchairs. After all their hard work, they could finally understand what yarn bombing was about.

The Yarn Bomb stayed in place for a month and had a wonderful response from visitors. The children who had been part on the project all came down with their families. Bus loads of people from out of
town came to take a look. The place was a live with activity, all because in the end, over a thousand people took up the challenge and knitted a park.

We shall be yarn bombing the park in 2017 - if you would like to get involved, get in touch!