Woori Festival - Preserving rich cultural heritage of the north

Woori simply means to weave in both Dagarte and Waali, the two dominant languages spoken in the Upper West Region.

For the past five years, the Nubuke Foundation Centre for Textiles and Clay has been hosting the Woori Festival to promote the rich heritage and culture of the people.

The festival showcases traditional and contemporary weaving techniques through workshops and live demonstrations and offers firsthand experiences of Ghanaian textile creation.

The festival also exhibits handwoven fabrics and designs and serves as a platform for artists to showcase their artistic works and creations while providing an avenue for weavers, who are mainly women from Nandom, Nadowli and Wa and for students from the Wa School for the Blind and the Deaf.

This year’s festival was on the theme: “The Role of Collaboration in Harnessing the Potential of Weaving for Socio-economic Development” and was held from March 6 to March 9, 2025, at the Nubuke Foundation Centre for Textiles and Clay at Loho in the Nadowli-Kaleo District.

The four-day event provided an opportunity for industry players, art enthusiasts and those from the creative industry to share ideas and learn about the challenges and prospects of the weaving industry.

World

The Chief of Loho, Naa K. Y. Kanyifia Chaahaah II, said the annual event opened up the community to the world and put the community on the world map.

Dignitaries at the opening ceremony of the 2025 Woori Festival

He expressed his appreciation to the foundation for choosing Loho to host the centre to provide an avenue to train the youth, particularly the women, to acquire a skill to earn them a living and in the process, preserve the rich cultural heritage of the people.

A representative of the Overlord of the Wa State, Wa Naa Fuseini Pelpuo IV, said during the COVID-19 period, the centre helped to train women and school dropouts and provided them with skills with which they are now earning a living.

He said the festival had helped in developing new designs for hand-woven cloths, thus helping to improve the industry.

The Upper West Regional Minister, Charles Lwanga Puozuing, who was the Guest of Honour at this year’s festival, said there was a need for the designers of the traditional cloths to assign names to them as part of the process of preserving their cultural significance and promoting the Ghanaian heritage.

“When our children learn the names and significance of these traditional garments, they develop a deeper appreciation for their heritage,” he said.

Benefits

A master weaver with more than five years’ experience in the industry, Lydia Alhassan, said the sector had helped to provide vocational skills to a lot of young women who would have otherwise migrated to the south in search of greener pastures.

She said there were not a lot of businesses in the region to provide jobs for the youth, so the weaving industry which is quite lucrative was one sector that was filling that gap.

“For some of us, it is not necessarily about the profits, but being able to provide these young girls with a skill that would earn them a living,” she said.

She said about a decade ago, there were not so many people in weaving “but now, it is catching on and, in every district, we have weavers, which has provided jobs for lots of young girls.

She said their membership runs into the hundreds, excluding the apprentices.

Potential

For her part, the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, said creative arts has the power to reform the narrative and fortunes of the Upper West Region if well harnessed.

In a speech read on her behalf by the Upper West Regional Director of the Ghana Tourism Authority, Moses Ndebugri, the Minister said the festival exemplified the creative arts’ ability to inspire change and enhance community involvement for national development.

Reaffirming the government's commitment to strengthening the ties with the private sector in the creative space, she said, “We stand ready to collaborate, to innovate and to contribute to the growth of the Ghanaian creative industry.”