With Jeanie Copland at the lectern, the London branch started into its new season with two contrasting speakers:-
Mary Kinipple – ‘Tapestry & Tibet’:
First time speaker Mary showed how travel influenced & developed her professional career as a craft weaver. Whilst Mary was always interested in textiles & design, it took an independent journey twenty years ago through Nepal & onto Tibet to provide her with a deeper appreciation of weaving as a craft & as a potential niche industry in the modern world. Starting in Kathmandu Mary came across traces of yak hair weaving by local trading families and as she headed up to Lhasa, the lessening of 20th century demands allowed space for a more varied & widespread weaving industry. Across wider Tibet she found traders operating out of small, family or village run factories…harnessing manual skills to produce intricate & practical objects such as traditional outfit, animal harnesses & small art objects. Mary was fascinated by how a skill so manually based could produce so much detail & colour…
Read more about Mary’s UK life at http://www.goring-gap.co.uk/artists.htm
Jonny Bealby – Pakistan as a travel destination
Second up saw the return of a club favourite, Jonny Bealby! Many of us have come into contact with Jonny…either via the club, travel shows or in the wide travel industry and we’ve all found him to be very engaging & welcoming J
Anyway this time round Jonny spoke, in warm details, about Pakistan and that despite its well documented struggles, there is so much to enjoy in that exuberant & vivid country. Since the mid 2000s Jonny’s main engagement in Pakistan has been through the development of his Wild Frontiers company & adventure tourism in the wider region. We saw & heard how local relationships could work to produce strong connections that would benefit tourists, business people & non-governmental organisations alike…adding power to the philosophy of “trade not aid”. Jonny & Wild Frontiers have lately taken this one stage further via their Wild Frontiers Foundation…see http://www.wildfrontiers.co.uk/wildfrontiers/responsibletravel.jsf for more details.
Enjoy 🙂
Picture courtesy of Tony Annis