12 | LUXlife Magazine Leading Fan Making Expert & Educator: Victoria Ajoku On a mission to revive the critically endangered craft of fan making, Victoria Ajoku is both the current and future face of fan teaching in the UK. Having appeared on TV shows such as Steph’s Packed Lunch and Love Your Weekend With Alan Titchmarsh, Victoria is leading and revitalising this niche sector. Her small business, Fan the Glory with Tori, was founded back in 2019, and is taking the art of fan making to another level. Below, we explore more about the business itself and its award-winning founder. Based in London, Victoria Ajoku is a ‘Master of the Arts’, a proud fan maker and the UK’s ambassador of Fan making. With an authentic and infectious personality, Victoria has been called upon to teach fan making across the UK and beyond, and she is the driving force behind the re-energising of the fan making art form, which is on the UK’s critically endangered list of crafts. Through her quaint operation, Fan the Glory with Tori, Victoria is restoring the very concept of ‘the fan’ by delivering two primary services. First and foremost, Victoria delivers a series of inclusive fan-making workshops both online and in person, with these carried out on either a one-to-one basis or in larger groups. These sessions are equal parts fun and therapeutic, and they are suitable for people of all ages (nursery children to seniors), backgrounds, abilities and walks of life. Alongside these workshops, Fan the Glory with Tori sells both handmade fans and fan related accessories online, as well as at craft markets and art fairs throughout the UK. Both of these services are carried out with the objective of not only keeping fan making alive but ensuring that it thrives. It’s dual focus sees that this practice is not only treated as a fun activity for everyone from work departments to professional artists seeking to master a new skill, but also that it adds value to their operations. This is achieved by the hand fans being able to have branded or decorated logos added to them, making them a talking point and a marketing tool for both a company and the wider fan making community. Diving deeper into her community, Victoria explains that the fan industry in which she operates can be described as, “the crafting, designing, trading, and teaching of hand fans.” For centuries, hand fans have been more than just personal cooling devices, they have been status symbols and fashion accessories, as well as having ceremonial uses. Capturing their multifaceted nature across her workshops, Victoria gives her clientele the opportunity to craft fans from a number of cultures, further reflecting the diversity of her sessions. Like with many things over the years, some of the virtuoso of hand fans has been lost, given that they have gone from luxury items to cheap, mass-produced commodities bought and sold at very low prices across the UK. It is this shift that had all but destroyed the intricate and personal process of making fans from scratch, until Victoria came along and started to once again champion it on a national scale. As a part of this commitment, Fan the Glory with Tori is the only organisation of its kind to offer a mobile service that travels around the UK to meet workshop participants wherever they may be. It is clear then that accessibility and convenience are cornerstones of the business, with these values being fully implemented through Fan the Glory with Tori also offering fan movement/dancing, fan fitness, and fan entertainment classes. “Fan the Glory with Tori can also be hired for celebrations such as weddings, birthdays, and hen parties, to name a few.” Outside of her business, Victoria also puts on public exhibitions. For example, last year she combined fan making with another endangered UK craft, paper marbling, which highlights a desire to continuously develop her knowledge and broaden her skills. As well as trying out new forms of craft to stay relevant, Victoria also attends the likes of business networking events and webinars to learn how to authentically grow her unique business. Thanks to these initiatives, 2025 is set to be another strong year for Fan the Glory with Tori, which has many new adventures on the horizon, beginning with the Greenwich FanMaking Craft Tour. After this, Victoria strives to do more interviews and appearances, before further expanding her creativity interests into calligraphy. We send Victoria Ajoku the best of wishes with these plans and celebrate her status as the face, heart, and soul of this sector through this well-deserved award. Contact: Victoria Ajoku Company: Fan the Glory with Tori Web Address: https://fantheglorywithtori.com/
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