Dressed to Impress or Dressed to Destroy?

‘Dressed to Impress or Dressed to Destroy?’ This was the thought-provoking title of a project recently completed by Sixth Class pupils at St Mary's Primary School in Nenagh, one that involved displaying repurposed old clothing in the town's charity shops.

St Mary's was one of 425 schools that successfully applied to the BLAST artist residency programme. BLAST is a new Department of Education initiative that aims to provide schools with the opportunity of working with a professional artist or creative practitioner on imaginative projects. The programme seeks to to foster creativity in schools and provide young people with opportunities to learn and develop the key skills and competencies of collaboration, critical thinking, problem-solving and innovation.

The Nenagh school's BLAST residency involved Cloughjordan artist Fionnuala McKenna working with teachers Ann Marie O’Sullivan and Christina McAvinchey, Sixth Class students, and the school community under the co-ordination of the Limerick Education Support Centre.

Fionnuala's artwork is manifested through socially-engaged projects. After completing the Teacher-Artist Partnership (TAP) programme last year, she has worked in a number of schools throughout counties Limerick and Tipperary.

FAST FASHION

For this project, she and the pupils at St Mary's researched ethical questions around sustainability, consumer choice, environmental impact and the rights of workers. Fionnuala wanted to create an awareness among the pupils about fast fashion - the low cost mass production of replicated high fashion designs. She wanted to make the youths aware of the sustainability issues associated with this industry, of the need to reuse old clothing, and the alternatives to online shopping.

The pupils wrote a rap song - to the beat of ‘The Spark’ by Kabin Krew - in which they hit out at Shein as a typical example of a multinational retailer that employs the fast fashion business model. They even wrote to a number of social media influencers, people whom they identified as promoting Shein fashions, asking them ethical questions about their choices.

SHOP WINDOW DISPLAYS

Impressively, the Sixth Class pupils with the help of Fionnuala also repurposed discarded clothes into new articles of clothing. Nenagh charity shops Tipperary Friends of Animals on Friar St, Vincent's on Mitchel St, Sue Ryder on Kenyon St and National Council for the Blind shop Bookends on Abbey Lane all kindly agreed to display their work.

The pupils, joined by Fionnuala and their teachers, visited the four shops to see their work on display in the windows. The work was accompanied by a descriptive report and QR code linking viewers to a video of the rap song they made.

They met with the shopkeepers, who praised the pupils for their efforts. Katie Tynan at the NCBI shop encouraged the children to donate any unused or unwanted clothes to charity; “don't throw them away”, she implored.

The culmination of the students' project saw the production of a body of work entitled ‘Dressed to Impress or Dressed to Destroy?’ It was a fitting addition to St Mary's award-winning commitment to the Green Schools programme, having been awarded their tenth Green Flag last June. The project was also in keeping with the Nenagh school's strong commitment to the promotion of development education and sustainability, one that saw St Mary's recognised as School of the Year 2022 in the Our World Irish Aid Awards, the theme of which was ‘Wellbeing for People and Planet’.

The school would like to thank Fionnuala for working with the Sixth Class pupils on this project over several weeks, and also the four charity shops for the displaying their work.