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Weaving Resistance, Weaving Worlds
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Weaving Resistance, Weaving Worlds is a co-created story performance by the Bodies of Wonder StoryChoir, 2025.
Developed by Josie Beszant, Nadin Hadi, Joanna Gilar, Siân Jones, Stacia Keogh, Sara Mcfarland and Kerima Mohideen, it is a wild spinning of stories, formed through a winter of deep dreaming and radical-collaborative storytelling.
As well as storytelling, the performance includes art, poetry and digital media by Josie Beszant, song and music by Sara Mcfarland. It is a weaving together of moss and nettle stories from across Europe with the stories of Land Defenders told by Kerima Mohideen; real life women and radical grandmas who are using weaving as an act of resistance across the world.
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Threaded with moss, nettle and secrets, spun aloud with justice, truth and blood, we tell tales of deep wells and old caves, of overgrown graveyards and pounding seas, and, at the centre, whispered into power by a great-grandmother, the spinning wheel which will not stop spinning, no matter the splinters that fly from it, the fire that burns it, or the clubs that beat it down.
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These stories sing the arc of change, womb-change, shape-change and dream change. They are queer stories, wilderstories and wonderstories, and we are delighted to share them with you in a gathering space of hope.
The films above were created by artist
Josie Beszant as part of the Weaving Resistance
project. "Mossycoat" has music and song by Sara
McFarland, "I Am Moss" has music by Ian Scott Massie.
The Stories
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Weaving Resistance, Weaving Worlds spins together four stories of weaving, the wild myth of Frau Holle, the German tale of the Three Spindles, the Flemish story of the Nettle Spinner, and the ancient tale of the Old One and the Trickster Crow. You can read more information about all of these stories here. ​
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We weave into this performance the real life stories of Roberta Blackgoat, a Native American activist and writer, Máxima Acuña, a Peruvian farmer and environmentalist, and Ranong Kongsaen, a Thai environmental activist and co-founder of the Radical Grandma Collective. These stories are brought into the space by Kerima Mohideen, who learnt of them through her education work at London Mining Network, a small charity that supports communities around the world who are protecting their land from the threat of harm by big mining companies.
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Our performances have raised money for Ranong Kongsaen's Radical Grandma Collective, an international and intergenerational solidarity effort supporting environmental justice activists in Northeast Thailand. To support RadGram, you can donate here.
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​About Our StoryChoirs
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​​"It was an absolutely wonderful dive into stories."​​
"Beautifully executed by riveting storytellers."​
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"It was incredibly rich, diverse, inspiring and thought-provoking."
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"I'd never been to anything like it. The stories were remarkable, each performance was spell-binding."
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"A delightfully creative, feeling space in which to explore fairy tales, inviting an embodied response that allowed the stories to circulate amongst us in unexpected and revealing ways."​
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"It was an absolute delight. I loved the combination of brilliant storytelling and green setting."
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"I loved just how alive the stories were in the space - and in the spaces in-between."​​​​​​​