Gina Maffey

Weaver of words, willow, and wildness
In Focus
Published
26 January 202601.26.26

We'd like to turn our attention to Dr. Gina Maffey and her weaving practice. Whether it’s willow, words or wilderness, she tells stories of how lives, landscapes and materials interlace to shape one another.

Gina has a background as an environmental researcher and science communicator, and captivated a large audience when, in 2016, she embarked on a “Wild Year” with her partner Koen Arts, sleeping outside for 365 nights in a row. The project, which resulted in the book Wild Jaar (by Arts) and two publications in the Routledge Handbook of Rewilding and Rewilding in Nederland, was an effort to escape the chaotic rhythm of daily life by seeking wildness in a land without wilderness.

Gina with her partner Koen Arts, during the Wild Year, 2016.

The Wild Year has had lasting ripple effects, and its influence continues to shape Gina’s work. Today she delivers specialised talks and workshops, often using basket weaving as an analogy for understanding our individual relationship with the natural world, not as a static backdrop to our lives, but as a living, shifting system that we are continually woven into.

The results of Gina’s Weaving workshop at Dear Wood, Landgoed Welna, 2024

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