Penny’s World Peace Production Workshop by Penelope Thompson, Australia
Theme: we can all contribute to making world peace.
Watch a video of 2 of the performances here:
In this workshop, world peace is symbolized as a very long, colorful knitted scarf. A scarf is something that makes the wearer feel safe, and warm and cosy. The world peace scarf will be finished when it is long enough to reach around the entire world – a distance of 40,076 kilometers!
The short, varied pieces of yarn or wool represent the different people and ideas in the world that need to be first joined together. Anything that is strong enough and flexible enough can be used for knitting.
Knitting represents the creative skills needed to weave together all the different strands to make a functional garment. It is a traditional women’s skill – time consuming, repetitive, creative, and done by hand with love.
Description of ‘Penny’s World Peace Production Workshop’ :
The Story:
In an imaginary world, the Department of World Peace is very short-staffed. One woman alone has been assigned the urgent job of making world peace.
However she finds that instead of one long ball of wool to knit with, she only has a big bag of short pieces of wool and string and ribbon, in all different colors and styles.
So it is very difficult for her to complete her task because the world peace scarf is very long – it will only be finished when it reaches around the entire world.
Because the job of making world peace is so urgent, the woman asks all the people around her to help.
She hands out the short pieces of yarn and asks that people co-operate and join their different pieces together to make one long piece of yarn that she can knit with.
She asks them to join their pieces very strongly, so that world peace will not fall apart later.
So some people join together the pieces of yarn, some people test the strength of the joins, and other people roll up the yarn into a ball.
Even with this help, the woman knows that her work alone making world peace will be too slow.
So she teaches others the woman’s skill of knitting, so that everyone can help to make lasting world peace.
The World Peace Production Workshop project is an original idea created by the Australian artist, Penelope Thompson. It first started in Chilwon Middle School, Gyeongnam province, Korea on December 14, 2004.
The world peace scarf has since travelled many times around Korea to cities such as Busan, Ansan, Gimcheon, Pocheon and Seoul, and it is getting longer all the time. It is an ongoing project, so if you would like to be a World peace maker or have the World Peace Production Workshop visit your school or festival please email me by CLICKING HERE
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