It was a dire situation indeed.

For the people of Maheshwar, reknowned for its hand-spun sarees, Handloom industry was not a progressive, fashionable vocation that is for innumerable aspirants, dying to get into fashion and design schools! And though the traditional art of weaving sarees and fabric is in each drop of their blood, carried through generations and generations, the weavers found themselves at loss.

It was one morning in 1978, when one of the weavers from Maheshwar came to Sally Holkar, with a simple request, "Please help us, we are dying!" When Sally enquired further, she was astonished to find that the once thriving weaver community of Maheshwar had now dwindled to just 300 weavers!

"India being the last depository of great diversity and heritage of handloom in the world, it would be a shame if it disappears."

- Sally Holkar,

And so the biggest revolution in the Indian handloom industry began, with Sally Holkar leading with WomenWeave, an NGO dedicated to support and develop the role of women in handloom weaving. Originally beginning as a program by WomenWeave, The Handloom School (THS) offered a work-study program with a specialized curriculum in design, textile technology, business, and sustainability.

Over time, The Handloom School (THS) has established itself as the first institution in India, where the sole aim is to bridge the gap between the young handloom weavers in villages and towns and the larger business community in the world. This gap, comprised of self-interested middlemen, limited access to the market, and lack of the technical know-how, has for long impeded the progress of these young weavers. The students are weavers who are armed with traditional weaving skills, learnt from their ancestors, but don't have access to conventional academic education.

WomenWeave has put the tools and trust back in the hands of the weavers, who now empowered with the right mentorship, skills and exposure, are taking up the mantle of "Handloom Hero" - becoming the young custodians of the resources and processes of handloom in the contemporary marketplace. THS provides these weavers with rigorous, non-traditional education, and is slowly developing into a central repository for handloom weaving knowledge and practices.

A place where handloom – won't just thrive and spread, but will be preserved, developed and evolved.

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