The World of Threads Festival
Fiber Art contemporanea locale, nazionale e internazionale
Oakville, Ontario, Canada.
Festival opening:
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Festival Opening Reception:
Saturday, October 14, 2023
Last day of the Festival:
Sunday, December 17, 2023
After a long hiatus because of Covid, The World of Threads Festival is booked for Fall of 2023 in Oakville, Ontario, Canada. We are really excited to have our next Call for Submissions in Spring 2023. We look forward to seeing all the new work you’ve been making since our last Festival in 2018.
The festival is one of the most vibrant fibre arts festivals in the world. We showcase contemporary fibre and textile art in all forms. Our last Festival featured 303 artworks by 65 artists from Canada, Denmark, England, Hungary, Netherlands, Norway, Russia and USA. The Festival was a huge success with attendance over 60,000 who came out to see the show.
The festival is not-for-profit organization with charitable status. It’s focused around Queen Elizabeth Park Community and Cultural Centre in Oakville, Ontario, Canada and organized and curated by Dawne Rudman and Gareth Bate
Synchronistic Curating:
Something that’s different about World of Threads is that we let the art guide us. Festival Curators Gareth Bate and Dawne Rudman don’t have predetermined curatorial ideas or impose their concepts on the artists. Each new festival is a blank slate. Shows develop entirely out of the submissions received. To find our main exhibitions, we look for connections and common themes between thousands of artworks.
These works having been made by hundreds of artists from around the world. Often artists seem to be on the same wavelength during a particular period.Over time, through many hours of sorting through artworks, the exhibitions themes just emerge and become clear to us. All artworks are made within the last two years before the show. This method has been very successful and has resulted in compelling and unique exhibitions.
The World of Threads Festival is a leading international showcase of contemporary fibre and textile art. We are a not-for-profit initiative with charitable status. The Festival is run by mother and son team, dedicated volunteer Dawne Rudman (Festival Chair and Curator) and Gareth Bate (Festival Curator, Photographer, Web and Graphic Designer). We believe that some of the most exciting and compelling artwork being made today is happening in the field of fibre arts. Through our initiatives we’ve discovered some remarkable artists and brought them to the attention of Canadian and international audiences.
We began in 1994 as a single Oakville exhibition, expanded to a full festival in 1998 and then became international in 2009. Our last Festival featured 303 artworks by 65 artists and attracted over 60,000 visitors. The festival draws visitors from across the region and internationally and many participating artists and visitors travelled from around the world to attend.
During the Festival we make a lot of effort to connect the artists for networking opportunities with each other. This is a great opportunity to meet fellow fibre artists from around the world in person. Some you may know only from social media. Bus tours bring in visitors from Toronto to Oakville for the opening reception.
Our website has become a central hub for lovers of fibre art with our Fibre Artist Interview series. We have a following in 96 countries. To date have conducted over 135 interviews with Canadian and international artists.
