Workshop 1
Creativity and Play.
Worthing Museum
Friday 8 April 2022
What is the place of dress in children’s lives? How do clothes enable self-expression and foster children’s aesthetic sense? Where does clothing intersect with other childhood possessions and obsessions? Abstracts and programme available here.
Speakers
Jane Suzanne Carroll (Trinity College Dublin)
Gerry Connolly and Jojo Lance (Worthing Museum)
Nicola Miles (University of Brighton)
Maija Nygren (Almaborealis)
Alice Sage (Hill Top)
Ben Wild (Manchester Fashion Institute)
Verity Wilson
Presentations.
The presentations below were delivered at the workshop. Thanks to Firas Itani for filming and to the presenters for agreeing to share their work.
Jane Suzanne Carroll’s paper explores child readers of Katy Keene comic as creators and designers of playful fashion.
Maija Nygren explains her workshop ‘What Are We Wearing?’ and design concept ‘Puzzleware’, which use clothes to promote creative thinking, problem solving, and dexterity for four- to twelve-year-olds.
Analyzing examples of children’s fancy dress, photographs from Vogue and the Bishopsgate Institute, and reports from CWS journals, Ben Wild's paper considers the problematic, important, often invidious, role of children in costume.
Nicola Miles speaks about her research on the users of Clothkits, the groundbreaking British home dressmaking company for kids' clothes.
Alice Sage uses archive records and costume at the Young V&A to piece together children’s experience of performing, singing, and wearing fantasy roles as part of an early twentieth-century troupe of young performers.
Verity Wilson's paper engages with childhood and fancy dress as depicted in photographs in Britain during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.