Jean Moran: 'Crafts are a good tool to help calm yourself'
Jean Moran combines weaving and mindfulness at an event for Craft Month.
Even as technology has come to dominate our work and social lives, so have handmade crafts such as textiles, glass and pottery become better appreciated across society. These traditions are celebrated in August Craft Month, a joint initiative by Design & Crafts Council Ireland, Craft NI and Cork Craft & Design that will see over 300 events promoted throughout the island of Ireland.
A number of events highlight how beneficial craft making can be to mental health. In Ennistymon, Co Clare, the weaver Jean Moran will collaborate with mindfulness facilitator Tríona Gleeson on a two-hour workshop on 26th August that combines the craft of drop spindle spinning with the practice of mindfulness. The workshop will run at Moran’s Irish Hand Weaves premises on Main Street, where she combines her production and retail business with teaching crafts.
Like many crafts workers, Moran extols the positive effect that working with her hands has had on her well-being. “There’s a lot of anxiety around, and crafts are a good tool to help calm yourself, and help other people to get into that space of being present,” she says. “Studies show that doing things by repetition helps slow down the airwaves and reduce anxiety.
“We live in the age of technology, but a lot of us artistic people are not really great with computers. We have to use them, as it’s how you communicate, and how you promote your work online. But for me, craft work is a way of getting back to myself, it’s almost like a meditation practice. It’s a way of life, really.”
Moran traces her interest in weaving to her time volunteering as a social worker in Peru in 2006. “I was working in a kind of shanty town outside Lima, where there was a lot of poverty and social issues,” she says. “The local women started teaching me to crochet. It was almost a therapeutic thing, I found it helped to keep me grounded. I learned how to make hats, and then moved on to making ponchos. I began just by watching the women making clothes, and then I started making them myself. I still make hats and ponchos based on that experience.”
On returning to Ireland, Moran decided to take her interest further. She enrolled on a craft course in Galway, and went on to do a BA in Textiles at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology. "After that I went out to Clare Island to work with Beth Moran of Ballytoughey Loom. Beth is a master weaver, who mainly focuses on silk. I spent nine months as her apprentice.”
Moran subsequently set up a workshop of her own in the Liberties, Dublin, but left the capital in 2018 to re-establish her business in Ennistymon, where there’s a thriving arts and crafts community.
Like many businesses, Moran had to curtail her activities during the Covid lockdowns, but she has observed first-hand how people seem to have become more interested in craftwork since restrictions were lifted.
“I think everyone was isolated for so long, and had time to reflect more, and it brought them back to an appreciation for crafts. The first summer we opened after the lockdown, it was amazing how many people came in. It was like people were seeing crafts again with a fresh eye.”
Moran produces a wide range of blankets, wall hangings, ponchos and hats, all woven from locally sourced raw fleece. “The fleece has already been dyed by the time I buy it, as I don’t really have the facilities for doing that,” she says. “I have a standard pattern book that I refer to when I’m working. There’ll be a structure to follow, but then, once I start weaving, I’ll often deviate from that and get more creative with pattern and design.
“Until recently, craft was seen as being very separate to art, but I think arts and crafts are crossing over a lot more now. I would really see myself as an artistic weaver.”
Moran met her workshop collaborator, Tríona Gleeson, when she came to a fleece spinning workshop at her premises. “Tríona’s really good at spinning, but her background is in meditation and mindfulness and all that. I had the idea of running workshops on the craft path to mindfulness for a good while, but then it was always a case of finding the right collaborator. With her interest in crafts and meditation, Tríona is ideal.
“At our workshop, we’ll be working in a circle, bringing awareness to the fleece and the fibres, and learning to spin on the drop spindles, but always with an awareness of the textures, the touch and feel of the fleece, and how the fibres smell. It’s about helping people become more in touch with their senses.”
As well as their Mindfulness and Drop Spindle Workshop for Craft Month on August 26, Moran and Gleeson will collaborate on two Mindfulness and Hand Embroidery workshops in September and October. Moran will also be collaborating with Aindrias de Staic on Culture Night (September 22). “He’ll be playing the fiddle and storytelling while I weave.”
