Members of the Siroua Wool Project Collective
The Imelsine N'Siroua Cooperative
The Imelsine N'Siroua Cooperative, the first cooperative of Siroua breed breeders and shearers.
The cooperative's members belong to three of the tribes of the Siroua massif: Aït Ouargharda, Aït Amassine, and Ikhzamen.
President: Abdallah Id Hussein
The Maroc Inédit Association
Annie Lauvaux is the coordinator of the Maroc Inédit association. She has been involved for 17 years in promoting sustainable ecotourism in Morocco, developing agroecological initiatives, short supply chains, and the participatory label "Agroécologie Maroc" within the Network of Agroecological Initiatives in Morocco. Siroua is her home territory. Annie has initiated numerous training sessions for artisans on the promotion and transmission of women's crafts. Based in Aveyron since 2022, she coordinates the Siroua Wool Project.
Jamal Amrray
Field coordinator, mediator
A native of the region with a passion for local culture, Jamal is a mountain guide.
The memòri lab association
memòri lab is the non-profit side of the memòri creative studio.
The memòri lab association is very involved in Morocco with the artisans with whom the studio has collaborated since 2017. Its goal is to promote the transmission of artisanal skills and know-how through cultural, social, innovative, and environmental initiatives.
memòri lab's various missions revolve around these four areas:
- Transmitting and preserving tangible and intangible cultural heritage
Fostering a unique dialogue through artisan and artist residencies by creating a collaborative partnership and supporting educational programs.
- Empowering artisan communities
Supporting the sustainability of crafts at the local level by encouraging the act of "creating" by prioritizing continuing education and guidance on governance concepts.
- Reconnecting crafts with nature
Raising awareness among artisan communities about the future challenges of sustainability and biodiversity protection, while simultaneously working on sourcing natural raw materials by prioritizing short, high-quality supply chains.
- Promoting sustainable tourism and cultural exchanges
Highlighting the richness of regional cultural heritage by organizing immersive stays within artisan communities, involving the village's younger generations and local artists and designers.
Our partners
L’association La Fibre textile
The Fibre Textile, a national association and its local groups, has been connecting people passionate about textile materials and skills—both professionals and amateurs—since 1992. The association organizes participation in textile events, workshops, sharing sessions, and knitting cafés.
It also created an international solidarity project called PEDAL FOR PEACE. Thanks to a dedicated network of spinners who create and sell skeins, La Fibre Textile has been supporting global textile initiatives since 2009. The goal is to preserve traditional skills and create or maintain jobs. These projects are located in: Peru (braided straw), Albania, Mexico, Ladakh, Nepal, Burkina Faso, Mongolia (yak wool), Togo, the Yanesha community in the Peruvian Amazon (native cotton cultivation), India, Palestine (embroidery), Kenya, Tajikistan, and France (reviving the French silk industry and the Niaux spinning mill).
Sheep Shearers Association
The A.T.M., a non-profit association under the French law of 1901, has been in existence since 1985 and brings together around 200 shearers. It is the only organisation representing sheep shearing professionals in France and is entirely independent. Its aims are to promote the profession of sheep shearing and to develop inter-professional coordination.
It has three areas of activity: training by instructor shearers, organising national and international shearing competitions, and publishing a well-known professional magazine, Déshabillez-moi, which serves as a link and showcase for the shearing community.
As shearers are not limited by geography, professionals from other countries also actively participate in the association, either as instructors, competitors, writers or simply to celebrate when the time comes.
They are key figures in the Siroua Wool Project:
- Reinhard Poppe (shearing trainer, shearer)
- Christelle Jeannet (wool expertise and wool sorting)
- Philippe Gayet (breeder, breed selector)
Pierre Girardin
Freelance photographer Pierre Girardin is working on a photography project focusing on the wool industry in the Siroua region of Morocco. He is interested in promoting wool.
In spring 2023, he took part in several sheep shearing workshops, meeting breeders and shepherds.
In spring 2024, Pierre is documenting a village in the Anti-Atlas Mountains where the association memòri lab is involved with the Tifarkhine cooperative of artisan weavers. He found the social, political and poetic aspects of weaving to be little known and worthy of interest. These women alternate their days between household chores and weaving, a collective activity that expresses a complete range of craft, from spinning to weaving.
In 2025, he set out to meet the shepherds of the Siroua massif and follow them in their daily lives.
Global Diversity Foundation
Harvest Festival
Harvest Festival Marrakech draws on the tradition, present in many parts of the world, of holding an annual celebration around the time of the main harvest seasons. This is how the festival approaches the concept of harvesting: not just as a physical act, but as a metaphor for collective growth and creation. It becomes a space where people gather to learn and exchange transformative ideas about the transmission of ancestral practices, to remember to listen deeply to the land and those who steward it and to address the critical issues facing our social, cultural, and communal landscapes.
The festival create paths of connection between their High Atlas communities and their Marrakech based communities whilst also sharing and expanding on these with translocal communities.
Harvest Festival Marrakech is organised by the Global Diversity Foundation (GDF) and was born out of the High Atlas Cultural Landscapes programme, which has been co-led alongside communities in the High Atlas region for over a decade.
Website
Timgharine Cooperative (hand spinning and weaving)
The Timgharine cooperative is located in a village of the Feija tribe in the Moroccan Anti Atlas mountains. The Berber Feija tribe is considered one of the oldest in these territories. The inhabitants of the region would walk for several days to reach this place of pilgrimage during the annual religious festival, the mûssem. The rhythm of life is marked by traditional festivals during which the women of the village wear the traditional garment, the haïk. These large woolen cloths decorated with henna-painted patterns reflect the symbolic richness associated with this territory.
The use of henna as a dye plant produces a range of colours from light orange to dark brown, depending on how long the paste is applied and how many times it is applied to the fabric. Master dyers also sometimes use other local dye plants such as madder, pomegranate bark and walnut bark.
In addition to this tradition of henna painting on textiles, it is one of the few villages in Morocco where women still spin by hand with extraordinary finesse. All the steps involved in making a piece of textile are entirely manual, from the raw fleece to carding and spinning, to mounting on a vertical loom, the ancestor of the horizontal loom.
The cooperative presents its finished products, including bags, slippers and djellabas, at regional fairs.
Homtex Spinning Mill (Rabat)
HOMTEX S.A.R.L, located in Rabat, Morocco, has been producing soft, 100% hydrophilic terry cloth items under the brand name ‘ORANIA’ since 1995, in accordance with European quality standards and norms.
After several years of professional expertise and investment in modern technologies, it has become a leader in its field on the local market.
The company is vertically integrated with a production capacity of 4 tonnes/day: spinning, weaving, dyeing, printing, manufacturing, embroidery and a CAD station for jacquard, printing and embroidery. This allows it to control all stages of production, ensure product quality and be more competitive in terms of price.
Our networks
Atelier, Laines d’Europe
The ATELIER-Laines d'Europe association supports sheep breeders in their initiatives by:
- offering them a variety of training courses: fleece sorting, knowledge of the material and processing stages, choice of finished products,
- by introducing them to other breeders engaged in similar initiatives, in order to create more effective collective structures,
- by putting them in touch with artisans and companies that carry out processing, so that they can receive specific products from their flock or group,
- by helping them to design new products and develop their activities,
- by involving them in European meetings, visits and professional exchanges.
Fernhill Farm et Fernhill Fibre
Fernhill Farm is a verified regenerative* eco farm and events venue atop the Mendip Hills, in Somerset, England. Owners Andy and Jen run commercial flocks of approximately 3000 Romney Shetland sheep selectively bred for fine colourful fibre, mature meat qualities, hardiness and their ability to restore biodiversity when continually grazing in larger nomadic-style flocks.
Seraphita fibres et fils
Spinner and wool producer Christelle Jeannet discovered wool through hand spinning in 2004 thanks to the European network ATELIER- Laines d'Europe. Since then, she has sought to enrich her training through numerous opportunities and encounters. It was her arrival in Auvergne and her discovery of local breeds that prompted her to start her wool business in 2013.
Her company, “Séraphita, fibres et fil,” combines the harvesting and selection of local wool with a range of services in both facilitation and the transmission of manual skills. Her knowledge has taken her all over France, Europe, and even beyond, with ongoing projects in Mongolia and Morocco.
Tonte et laine
Gaby Bouvier is a shearer. She selects fleeces during her shearing projects, then sorts and transforms them with the help of a network of artisans (Niaux spinning mill, La fée capeline, origine tissage, etc.).
She is a member of the Lana Sarda collective. She has participated in training projects in Siroua.
Lana Sarda Collective
Lana Sarda is an association that brings together professionals (breeders, shearers, wool professionals, artisans, etc.) who share a desire to promote wool from “Sardinian” sheep and encourage their breeding in France.
