One of the last places to learn handweaving in Nassau County will be coming to an end next spring with the Great Neck Community Education Center no longer planning to offer classes after the 2019 spring season.
A letter to the center’s director, Samantha Tarantola, asks that the decision to discontinue the handweaving classes next year be reconsidered because no other programs exist nearby to foster the skill.
Handweaving is the interlocking of threads by hand on a loom to create cloth.
“It is important that handweaving, an eminent, time-honored craft, with a venerable history, continue to be offered,” the letter, signed by 11 students, says. “In our increasingly mechanized society dominated by new technology, handweaving is in dire need of responsible stewardship to perpetuate its place among the traditional arts of our culture.”
The letter also says that over the decades, the program has benefited “hundreds of adult students” and is currently “fully subscribed with a waiting list.”
Cynthia Berger, one of the letter’s signers who has attended the classes for more than a decade, said that handweaving is a skill that not only allows people to make place mats, religious scarfs and other goods, but can connect people to the past.
“They do wonderful things with the Great Neck ed [center],” Berger, a Lake Success resident, said on Monday. “I don’t know why they’re cutting this out.”
Barbara Berkowitz, the president of the Board of Education, confirmed the class’s cancellation and said it was mainly related to the teacher’s retirement and the classroom “desperately” being needed for other classes.
If the teacher wasn’t retiring, Berkowitz said, “they never would’ve canceled that class.”
Valerie Bealle, who has taught the class for more than 20 years, said she would like to see it continued as weaving is responsible for “every bit of cloth” someone has ever worn.
But because “the room is filled with very large looms,” she said sharing the space wouldn’t be possible.
“I think that the problem is that they don’t want to use the space that way because it really doesn’t bring in enough revenue,” Bealle said of the school district’s position.
“I can understand it,” Bealle later said. “I also understand that weaving is a very unique craft [and] because it takes up so much space, there are very few facilities that are able to afford it and there certainly is nothing like it on Long Island.”
Ultimately, Bealle said, it will be “very sad” to see the classes end.
