Kirk Dunn, an actor, writer and internationally renowned knitter, is fascinated by the many ways in which knitting can bring people together and help them see eye to eye. In this multi-platform world, he uses original, out-of-the-box knitting and his unique perspective in a variety of ways: as visual art to create conversation around interfaith empathy (see his installation, “Stitched Glass”) and homophobia; as the foundation for theatre that uses knitting to tackle anti-Semitism and Islamophobia (book his one-man show, “The Knitting Pilgrim,” or the upcoming WWII play “Spycraft” about a woman who spies on the Nazis by knitting code into ordinary garments); hosts a podcast and digital series to enter into gentle, curious conversation with people of other faiths to understand their point of view (check out “The Knitting Pilgrim Talks” on YouTube or Spotify); designs patterns that feature an artist’s palette of rich colours (see his original patterns available on Ravelry); and gives workshops in improv on the needle, colourwork, and knitting and spirituality, to share the amazing transformation this humble craft can offer individuals and communities. Kirk looks for common ground to knit people together through empathy, understanding and art.

The Knitting Pilgrim 2024 Tour Dates

The Knitting Pilgrim and Stitched Glass Tour

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The Knitting Pilgrim, featuring actor and knitter Kirk Dunn, is a multidisciplinary one-man show that combines personal storytelling, image projection, and three huge knitted panels that look like stained glass windows, to explore the connection amongst the Abrahamic faiths: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. The play recounts Kirk’s fifteen-year artistic and spiritual journey of hand-knitting the ambitious project, and looks at why people struggle to get along today, the meaning of art, the hell of grant-writing and the power of love to overcome major obstacles (and minor mishaps).

The show, along with a Q&A/meet and greet immediately following the performance, which gives audiences a chance to come up on stage, see the panels up close and meet Kirk, is available for booking, nationally and internationally. Please use the contact page of this website to reach out.

To enjoy the positive media coverage of our 80+ past shows, please scroll below.

STITCHED GLASS - THE DOCUMENTARY

This 30-minute documentary film by filmmakers Ian Daffern and Omar Majeed had its 2021 premiere at the International Festival of Films on Art, and was nominated for the Golden Sheaf award at the Yorkton Film Festival. Watch the trailer below.

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Media Coverage

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Artwork courtesy of Krista Hill

Artwork courtesy of Krista Hill







“The Knitting Pilgrim is, without a doubt, a show that our audience genuinely fell in love with. They stood in the theatre talking with Kirk for over an hour after the show finished. It has everything a presenter could want … empathy, humour, intellectual and spiritual reflection. It leaves you with optimism that harmony for oneself (and the world at large) is just around the corner. This one is worth it.”

- Derek Ritschel, Artistic Director, Lighthouse Festival Theatre

Saturday, Jan 25, 2020, Lighthouse Theatre, Port Dover, ON

PAST SHOWS

  • Friday, October 20, 2023, 7:30 pm, Theatre Antigonish, Bauer Theatre, 50515 Chapel Square, Antigonish, Nova Scotia.

  • Thursday, October 19, 2023, 7:30 pm, The Astor, 219 Main St. Liverpool, Nova Scotia.

  • Wednesday, October 18, 2023, 7:30 pm, Second Wind Music Centre, 16 Curtis R., Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick. For tickets, email secondwindmusiccentre@gmail.com or call 506-425-4999

  • Saturday, October 14, 2023, 7:00 pm, Knox Presbyterian Church, 55 Hincks Street, St. Thomas, ON. Free will donation at the door.

  • Saturday, September 09, 2023, 7:00 pm, East End United Regional Ministry, 310 Danforth Ave, Toronto ON.

  • Saturday, August 19, 2023, 7:30 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

  • Friday, August 18, 2023, 7:30 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

  • Friday, August 18, 2023, 2:00 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

  • Thursday, August 17, 2023, 7:30 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

  • Thursday, August 17, 2023, 2:00 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

  • Wednesday, August 16, 2023, 7:30 pm, Theatre Collingwood Simcoe Street Theatre, Collingwood, ON.

Knitting WorkshopS

Watch this space!


Join Kirk Dunn, aka The Knitting Pilgrim, to talk about the miraculous transformation of a single strand into a fabric stitched with care, intention, and love. In this workshop for intermediate to advanced knitters, Kirk looks at three spiritual applications of this accessible artform: mindfulness, ministry, and craftivism. Each application is explored through small group brainstorming, knitting exercises, and free pattern/how-to handouts which participants can use to start a program of their own. Kirk will encourage and empower knitters to be the change they want to see in the world. Participants will leave the session with a deeper appreciation of what they can do for themselves, and, more importantly, for others… through the accessible craft of knitting.

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PAST WORKSHOPS

  • Thursday, Jan 25, 2024, @8:00 pm: APCE 2024, Union Station Hotel, 1820 Market St, St. Louis, Missouri, USA

  • Monday, Nov 13, 2023 @ 1 pm: Madison Knitters' Guild, Madison, WI

  • Saturday, May 28, 2023 @ 2 pm: Kings Playhouse, Georgetown, PEI

  • Saturday, Feb 01, 2020 @ 1 pm: St. Andrew’s Church, Toronto, ON

  • Saturday, Oct 26, 2019 @ 1 - 4pm: knitting workshop at Floradale Mennonite Church, Floradale, Ontario

  • Friday, Nov 1, 2019 @ 1-4pm: knitting workshop at FACTS, Blyth, Ontario

  • Saturday, May 18th, 2019 @ 1 pm: The Lodge, Amherst Island, ON (Featuring Topsy Farms yarns)

  • Sunday, May 5th, 2019 @ 11 am: Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, Ontario

Work shop at Fibre Arts & Creative Textiles Studio (FACTS) Blyth, November 2019

Work shop at Fibre Arts & Creative Textiles Studio (FACTS) Blyth, November 2019

A NOT-SO-GOOD MEMORY THAT BECAME AN EXCELLENT ONE

On the morning of June 13th, 2019 I had decided to get an early start to the 5-hour drive to Ottawa where I was to open an 8-show run of The Knitting Pilgrim at the Ottawa Fringe Festival two days later.  It was about 6 am. My wife, Claire, got up to help and see me off. I was headed first to pick up our stage manager and projection operator, Kelly Anderson, and then together we’d head eastward for the 450-km drive to Ottawa. But instead of finding our 2012 Kia Rondo packed to the rafters with three bags of tapestries and all the lights, set, and projector equipment necessary to run the show, we found a half-empty vehicle, with all the doors unlocked.  Someone had broken into the car, and had made off with as much as they could – which was a Rubbermaid bin filled with three projection screens and the show computer (which Kelly uses to run the show’s projections and audio-visual component), our Stage Manager’s binder with the hard copy of the script with all the show sound, light and video cues in it, and a couple of large duffle bags containing two of the three Stitched Glass tapestries.

Losing the computer, the projection screens and the show binder was a real blow, but at least those could be replaced. The tapestries, however, were another matter. Ironically, they would have no value to whoever took them, but to me they represented 15 years of work.  To me, they were priceless.  In my mind I played out a horrific scenario; the tapestries sitting in a dumpster somewhere, discarded by a thief who wanted to rid himself of the useless evidence of his crime. Soon they’d be landfill and the rest of the The Knitting Pilgrim tour would be over.

I was paralyzed by this vision. Claire instantly woke up our kids Findley and Emmett and they got up and headed out into the neighbourhood on their bikes – in the pouring rain – to check out parking lots and dumpsters. I called our show producer, Anna Pappas, Artistic Director of Ergo Arts Theatre, and Kelly, our projection operator, and told them what had happened. They got up instantly and headed to our place. Then I called the police to report the theft and was told I could submit a report online or speak to an officer directly over the phone.  I chose to speak to a human so that I communicate the dire nature of the situation – and was informed that someone would be available to take my report in about two weeks.

Claire, Findley and Emmett returned from their very wet bike ride around the neighbourhood in despair. They’d found nothing. Claire wrote a press release to pass to our show publicist so that we could get the word out about the theft as efficiently as possible. We talked about printing up a flyer that we could put into every household mailbox in the neighbourhood. Claire was in a rage about the whole thing and couldn’t stand staying in the house, doing nothing. She headed back out on her bike.

By now, Anna and Kelly had arrived. They unpacked the rest of the car to take a show equipment inventory of what was left.  I changed my mind and got on the Toronto Police Service website.  Filling in the impersonal little boxes was soul-crushing.  One field asked for the monetary value of the items stolen.  How was I supposed to put a value on 15 years of work? The instructions told me that if I was unsure, I should enter “zero.”

It was at this low point that Claire, who had gone a different route on her bike than she had with the kids an hour or two before, called. She was standing outside a neighbour’s house and had her eyes on the two duffle bags, open and leaning up against the neighbour’s trash and recycle bins. And the tapestries were inside them, wet but safe.

Thank God.  And thank Claire. The next twenty-four hours were a blur of replacing the show equipment – a new computer, and an emergency call to Ontario Staging who knocked off the order for three new projection screens (which had originally taken 6 weeks to fill) in about four hours. As I drove to the Ottawa Fringe the next day, our stage manager Kelly reconstructed the list of hundreds of lighting cues with the help of Jennifer Stobart who had been the stage manager for the premiere of the show and first part of our tour.  Forty-eight hours after the tapestries spent most of the night in the rain, we played to rave reviews at the Ottawa Fringe, and the recovery was complete.  From the depths of despair to the high of a hit.  I’m eternally grateful we were able to complete that journey… but it’s not a trip I’d want to take again.

“Kirk’s commitment to seeing this remarkable 15-year project through is outstanding. He has taken an accessible medium like knitting and not only placed it in the Museum, but used it to communicate ideas that can help repair our social fabric. And then to combine it with a piece of theatre - that is to truly create a unique offering. ”
— Nataley Nagy, Executive Director, Kelowna Art Gallery
“In the knitting world where grey and beige plain sweaters seem to rule, how extraordinary to find this energetic man knitting such detailed and intricate color. I applaud his moxie!”
— Kaffe Fassett, Textile Artist
“The Knitting Pilgrim is astounding and the opportunity to engage with it and Kirk’s amazing story-telling talent is a much needed balm for our age, for any age.”
— Peter Smith, Project & Creative Director, Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity
Toronto Fringe, Bloor St. United Church. Credit: Matthew Sarookanian

Toronto Fringe, Bloor St. United Church. Credit: Matthew Sarookanian

What Audiences Are Saying:

“This show was transformative. When something you looked at before you came in, you can see the exact same thing after you leave and it looks different to you, and you think differently about it, and you feel differently about it … That’s the mark of really, really, really exceptional theatre. When people ask me how this play was, I say I really cannot describe it to you: it is beyond description. I would give this 6 stars, if I could, out of 5. ”
— CFMU Hamilton Fringe Review
“A brilliant show that sticks with you, teaches you how to think, about faith, empathy resilience, and art. When doubt about your talent slips in and dogs your every step keep knitting. The end created a wonderful gasp and the tears begin to flow. This is a brilliant moving piece. ”
— Deb K.
“This is a wonderful, compelling, one-of-a-kind show! My favourite at the Fringe thus far. A “from-the-heart” tale of artistic creativity, religious tolerance, and the difficult beauty of finding your path. Went with my teenagers and we haven’t stopped talking about it since! ”
— Cynthia S.
“You should see this work in person at the Fringe while you can. For it is my belief that years from now, after the tapestries have finished touring as part of this show, and then have gone on to tours of major museums across the country ... that this work will rank among the great pieces of Canadian art, and indeed one of the great pieces of art in the world”
— Scott W.
“I couldn’t have said this better, Scott. I was truly shocked by how MOVING this show is, on many many levels. I couldn’t talk when the tapestries were revealed. They are stunning. I hope this show travels the world, and then comes back to Toronto where I will see it AGAIN.”
— Patti L.



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