The Vision Weave Project

Vision Weave is an interactive community arts project that integrates fibre arts, text messages and community visioning in the creation of woven public art. In Vision Weave, each community participant is given a strip of fabric on which they write their message or vision for a peaceful future and then interweave it into a collective tapestry.

The finished tapestry is installed in the community as permanent public art. It is visible and accessible to the community that made it. The text messages and visions are compiled into a resource document that can be used for all future planning and goal setting within the community. The process facilitates pride, ownership, and a sense of belonging. The Vision Weave project is a profoundly moving community builder.

By mirroring back to the community its visions and goals, the Vision Weave project seeks to strengthen the belief that we can think and act creatively and collectively for the well being of our community and the Earth. Weaving accompanies every human culture on the planet – it’s an excellent metaphor for intercultural connection and collective collaboration.

Thoma Ewen is one of the leading textile artists in Canada today. Her community tapestry project entitled, "Invocation of Peace" was referred to as an "extraordinary project of lasting impact in the community" by the Ontario Arts Council. Ewen has exhibited her work at the International Fibre Arts Symposium at the Central Museum of Textiles in Lodz, Poland, at Museo Ixchel in Guatemala, at Museo de Arte Moderno in Venezuela, and in Canada, England, France, and the USA. Her commissions include works for the Boyne River Ecology Centre, the Ministere de la Culture et des Communications du Quebec, and for the City of Ottawa. Ewen has directed community tapestry projects in Canada and Europe, and has facilitated weaving workshops with schools, with indigenous weavers in Central America and with northern Canadian communities. Ewen's open and sharing approach to empowering creativity has allowed her to communicate the beauty and mystery of weave to intergenerational and intercultural collaborators.

Weaving is a global contemporary metaphor for the interactions, interconnections and inter-dependencies that naturally occur in all living systems of our biosphere.