Each year, Tali Gallery works with the Beanie Festival in Alice Springs to spread the joy of making beanies and to help raise funds for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation. Â Â Each year, Tali G works with a different segment of the Sydney community – professional textile artists and Wrapped with Love in 2011, the community and guerilla knitters with a Rozelle beanie and a Christmas in July Rozelle Fest in 2012, and then our local kids’ art school, ArtSPARK in 2013 when some of the beanies were also exhibited in Leichhardt Library for NAIDOC Week.
Each year, the Beanie Festival works on a special theme – in the recent past, the themes have been The Elements, Yarns and Stories, and Friendship.
You can see the history of the Beanie Festival in Alice Springs on their website:  www.beaniefest.org  This year’s theme is “Out of this World”.
We will be exhibiting beanies from their Museum in June to celebrate the festival and we will be asking knitters, felters, decorators and beanie creators of any description using other materials and techniques to add to our exhibition. Â Â Further, we ask schools to hold beanie days, either in lieu of the Easter Hat Parade, or as a special NAIDOC Week activity – where students can wear their creation to school and then donate a gold coin to the Indigenous Literacy Foundation – the aim is to spread this practice across Australia.
So please start thinking about what you may be able to do or how you might contribute to this fun and worthwhile project!
Lorraine McArthur’s Beautiful Beanie Created for the Alice Springs Beanie Festival “The Blood Flower” Winner : A beanie that captures the story and spirit of the land we live in.