The Broad Cloth

Welcome to The Broad Cloth, an accessible storytelling journey that is woven by community, and weaves communities together.

Through theatre, art, craft, music, community gathering, and the sharing of local wisdom, we collectively imagine Skylark Island, a small fictional island and its community, inspired by the culture and history of our host island and its community.   We are effectively laying a transparency of the fictional island over different real islands, to see what Skylark Island looks like when it is imagined into being with the unique aspects of each different island, and to find the common places where we are all interconnected.   This site will tell you more about how we hope to achieve that, and show you what we've already made.   There is a storyline which runs through everything. We aim to create an authentic environment for this narrative within which we can explore the friction caused when the future makes demands on tradition that it might not be able to accommodate without changing.   There will be ways to get involved in person and also online. We expect the project to run for several years.  

Project Intentions

We'll be focusing on some key areas on each island, and throughout the network of islands and community groups:
Access: accessibility and inclusion, especially in areas like neurodivergence, and for those who have experienced barriers to cultural and community activity
Connecting: making and maintaining connections with, and between, community groups and individuals, on each island and across the whole network
Craft: especially heritage crafts, with a particular focus on textiles
Ecology: especially the impact of climate change
Folk traditions: especially around music and community gathering
The Future: considering models of value and governance for future stability and growth, particularly for community groups and organisations
Heritage: capturing the unique heritage of the islands and their people  

Quick Start

Click here for a quick start without having to read a lot of stuff, use the search feature above, or see the links in the World Codex below.      

Host Islands

Here are a few of the places who are hosting Skylark. Each one has its own symbol to help identify which pages on this site refer to a particular host island.    

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