Alice Springs Beanie Festival

Alice Springs, Australia, June 29 to July 2, 2007

Article by Lisa Waller

 

 

THEY'RE really passionate about their beanies in the Central Australian desert where winter days can be frosty once the sun starts to wane and it doesn't warm up until mid-morning.

Alice Springs, the desert capital, has declared itself the beanie capital of the world, and every year at the end of June thousands flock to the Alice Springs Beanie Festival to check out, try on and take home the perfect beanie.

Word has spread throughout Australia and the world that this is one of the coolest, quirkiest little fiber festivals anywhere and every year more people come from afar to experience the fabulous opening night party, the fashion, the humour (you really can't take beanies too seriously), the craft workshops and events and the heavenly cakes and other treats the community makes to support the festival.

It's a great opportunity for visitors to meet the locals, not just from Alice, but also the Aboriginal people who come to town from remote communities to show off their unique headgear and demonstrate traditional crafts including spinning, weaving and basketry.

 
The festival will celebrate its 11th year from June 29 to July 2, 2007, and people who are passionate about fiber crafts will flock to the Red Centre from all over Australia (and some will come from other countries too) to enjoy the fun and experience the amazing landscape and culture of the desert.

For fiberholics who want to completely immerse themselves in the festival there are four days' worth of parties, exhibitions, competitions, fiber workshops, demonstrations and lots of  opportunities to make friends over an excellent cup of coffee and cake in Beanie Central, the festival hub where more than 3000 beanies are displayed for sale.

 

There is also an exhibition of “high art” beanies in the regional gallery, which attracts work from top artists from all over Australia and increasingly from overseas as well. Generous prizes are awarded in many categories for the most creative, humorous and special beanies and their cousin the tea cozy.

 

The festival had its beginnings in one woman’s work with indigenous people in the desert.

 

Craft can be a great social ice breaker, so when festival founder Adi Dunlop was going out into the Central Australian desert to run living skills courses in remote communities over a decade ago, she packed her crochet hooks and a stash of yarn.

 

She discovered that beanies were very popular - winter nights can be bitterly cold and for the Aboriginal people who spend most of their time outside it can be a problem keeping warm.

 

Adi decided to share the crochet hooks and yarn around to teach the women how to make the simple hats which are the perfect clothing for the desert lifestyle being light, highly portable and designed to keep in the maximum amount of body heat.

 

Many of the older women already knew how to crochet and knit. They had been taught by the missionaries back in the 1930s and 40s when they had a plentiful supply of wool from the vast sheep stations that once sprawled across the desert.

 

When Adi arrived at Ernabella, about 275 miles south-west of Alice Springs she quickly discovered that the beanie had a long history in their community - ‘Mukata’ is the word for beanie in the local Pitjantjatjara language and they had been made for ceremonial purposes - spun from human hair and emu feathers.

 

Ernabella arts co-ordinator Hilary Furlong explained that in the 1940s the Ernabella women had been encouraged to do their traditional spinning and taught to weave on handlooms to produce rugs and other items. But the sheep had been moved on in the early 1970s and the women’s skills had been lying dormant since the wool supply dried up. Batik and other crafts had been introduced to help the community support itself, but these older spinners and weavers had not made the transition to painting, dyeing and ceramics.

 

Adi was delighted to find that because she was reviving an old craft it was quick and easy for these women to learn to make a beanie, and the older ladies’ joy at having yarn in their hands again was infectious - the younger women couldn’t wait to learn.

 

The hats were coming thick and fast and the next challenge was to keep the yarn up to them.

 

The women of Ernabella had another skill that was much, much older than their crocheting. They had been spinners for thousands of years. With so much beanie making going on, the women were keen to make spindles (punu) and start spinning (rungkani) their own yarn.

 

Not only was Adi on the hunt for yarn, but for fleeces. She put out the word through churches and spinning guilds and her call was answered by many good-hearted people from all over Australia sending mountains of yarn and sacks of fleece.

 

With beanies coming thick and fast from the desert communities, Adi, her niece Jo Nixon and friend Merran Hughes decided to hold a Tupperware-style party in the desert capital of Alice Springs so the women could make some much-needed income from their beautiful work. It was a sell-out, the Alice Springs Beanie Festival was born, and Adi, Jo and Merran have been kept very busy ever since.

 

It’s a hugely popular event, still run completely by volunteers. Its major aims remain to promote the textile work of indigenous artists and give all textile lovers an opportunity to be creative and have fun.

 

Thousands of people take part - they come from all over to see the outstanding work by top fiber artists, find themselves the perfect beanie and soak up the joyful atmosphere of this fiber festival that’s like no other.

 

The women of Ernabella are there every year to claim a host of prizes for their beautiful work and demonstrate their spinning.

 

The festival runs workshops in Aboriginal communities throughout the year to teach skills including crochet and felting, and Australian yarn company Cleckheaton sponsors the Aboriginal artists’ work and the festival with donations of beautifully colored Australian wool and other yarns.

 

This year’s festival runs from June 29-July 2. It’s open to everyone. For details about the festival and information on how to enter your beanies and tea cozies visit the website www.beaniefest.org.

 

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Lisa Waller lives in Newcastle, New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia. She is a newspaper journalist who dyes, spins, knits and crochets. She is a member of the Alice Springs Beanie Festival committee and spent a month in the Aboriginal community of Ernabella in the southern winter of 2006, helping artists there get ready for the beanie festival.