Border Loomers

Incubated Project

Funding Program Assembling Voices

Border Loomers is a Bisbee, Arizona-based initiative serving binational communities across Southern Arizona and Northern Sonora, Mexico. Traditional weaving knowledge is disappearing in border communities, and fiber arts education remains largely out of reach. Border Loomers addresses this erasure by creating a binational platform for storytelling through fiber that prioritizes healing through hands-on learning.

The initiative preserves heritage while reimagining it as a tool for resilience and cross-cultural collaboration. Through community workshops, artisan interviews, and public installations, Border Loomers amplifies the voices of borderland artisans. Workshops are led by elders and queer makers, and use portable frame looms to host free sessions in public spaces on both sides of the border, engaging artists, youth, and elders in fiber art rooted in cultural memory and place.

Team Lead

Fernando Serrano
Fernando Serrano is a queer Mexican-American artist and cultural worker based in Bisbee, Arizona. An active and proud member of Central School Project (CSP), Fernando is deeply committed to community-building through accessible artmaking and mutual support. His artistic practice is rooted in printmaking, textiles, ceramics, metalsmithing, and experimental processes, and he believes strongly in the preservation and evolution of traditional craft.

More Projects

go to Sojourners for Justice Press

Sojourners for Justice Press
Connecting emerging and established Black publishers with alternative techniques, networks, and knowledge production—as well as each other. Part of Assembling Voices
go to Cartographies of Massacres: Visual and Spatial Methods in Human Rights Research

Cartographies of Massacres: Visual and Spatial Methods in Human Rights Research
This project examines how communities process generational trauma by combining human rights research with innovative visual and spatial methods, focusing on massacres in Israel/Palestine between 1947 and 1949. Part of the Hard Questions Grant
go to Landscapes of Ruination: Participatory and Community Stewardship of Industrial Heritage

Landscapes of Ruination: Participatory and Community Stewardship of Industrial Heritage
Working with former miners, local leaders, women's organizations, academics, and city officials, the project builds a model for heritage management that can be replicated anywhere. Part of the Global Change Program
go to The History and Hopes of Altgeld Gardens

The History and Hopes of Altgeld Gardens
Documenting Chicago's Altgeld Gardens without documentary interviews, aerial photography, and portraiture. Part of Assembling Voices