Discover your creative spirit!
Spirit of Creativity is a specialist textile tourism company, founded by textile artist, Rosalind Johansson.
About Our Tours and Workshops
All of our textile tours and workshops are focused on a hands-on approach to learning. We are passionate about textiles and love introducing people to new places and new skills!
Most of our tours are set date, group tours - but we do also organise bespoke tours for private groups (please contact us for more information). Our tours are lead by a textile artist and has travelled in the area before - their experience and insight lends an extra dimension to our tours and means you have someone to guide you. Small group sizes mean that every person receives copious individual attention by teachers during workshops, and meeting other like-minded people is always a pleasure!
About Rosalind
Spirit of Creativity was founded by Rosalind - a textile artist working with natural fibres to create colourful art quilts and felted articles. She trained as a weaver in Sweden in the 1970s and has run textile workshops worldwide. She has wide-ranging expertise in ethnic textiles from Peru, Africa and Scandinavia.
Taking influences from her years spent living in Botswana and Tanzania in Africa, Norway and Sweden in Scandinavia and Peru in South America, Rosalind's vibrant style celebrates the wealth of colours, themes and techniques used in textile artistry across the globe. A keen quilter, Rosalind uses intricate stitching details to create vivid masterpieces, often depicting visual scenes synonymous with the countries she has inhabited.
Rosalind is an interesting public speaker and teacher of textiles, having spoken at many quilt groups and regional days, and is a teacher at The Festival of Quilts and other textile shows around the UK.
In 2015 Rosalind toured across Peru, which she names as the inspirational theme for much of her recent work. She has since visited Peru several more times, deepening her knowledge of the wonderful textiles to be found there, not least embroidery, weaving and knitting. She was lucky enough to spend an intensive 3 week period studying weaving techniques with world-renowned Peruvian weaver, Maximo Laura, in his studio in Lima.
She moved to Orkney in 2017 fulfilling a long-term ambition. The wildlife, land, sky, seascapes and archeology providing an incredible mix of inspiration for her current creations which can be viewed in the Finstown shop.