CP1002: Wearable arts collaboration

Background

Wellington High School, a co-educational school of approximately a thousand students, is located in the inner city suburb of Mt Cook. All Year 9 students take Technology, in which they do a term each of Food, Design, Fashion, and Graphics. These are offered as option subjects in Year 10, and students taking Fashion Technology can continue into the Fashion Textile Design Technology courses in Years 11-13.

Queen Margaret College, an independent, Presbyterian girls' school sited in the central city suburb of Thorndon, has a roll of approximately 650 Year 1-13 students. Technology is compulsory at Years 7-9, and Materials Technology is offered as an option subject at Years 10-13.

Barbara Knight, HOD Technology at Queen Margaret, had worked with the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa in 2005, when her Year 11 class developed souvenir items for their client, the Te Papa store. See the case study BP601: Te Papa Souvenirs. The following year two students from that class created a wearable arts display for Te Papa's front windows. See the case study BP632 Te Papa wearable arts and the 2007 Dominion Post article, where two Year 13 students developed another wearable arts display for Te Papa.

Barbara's career started with her study in Fashion Design and Technology at Wellington Polytechnic (now Massey University School of Design). After completing her diploma she worked as a pattern-maker and designer for a leather company, then decided to move into teaching and trained at Wellington Teachers' College. Barbara's first teaching position was at Kapiti College, and she joined Queen Margaret College as Materials Technology teacher in 2003, becoming HOD Technology in 2005. Barbara has also been involved in national moderation and external assessment for NCEA Technology.

Barbara had met Kylie Merrick when they were both studying Fashion Design at Polytech, and the pair remained in contact over the years. Kylie went on to work as a free-lance designer in Wellington, doing shop window displays and exhibition installations amongst other things, and later returned to Polytech as a part-time lecturer in Fashion Design. She enjoyed this aspect of her work so much that she decided to teach at secondary school level and did teacher training at Wellington Teachers' College. Kylie started teaching at Hutt Valley High School, and moved to Wellington High School in 2003 as Fashion Design Technology teacher. In addition to lecturing part-time at Massey she has continued doing a wide range of freelance design work and has worked at various times in facilitating, moderating and examining roles for NZQA.

Pre-planning

After studying Fashion Design in the same intake at Wellington Polytechnic, Barbara and Kylie had worked in different areas before meeting up again at Wellington Teachers' College. The friendship established during this time has continued over the years and enabled an ongoing collegial relationship. This proved particularly valuable when Kylie and Barbara, as first-year teachers in Wellington, were the only two beginning Textiles teachers in the city, as they were able to support each other.

The two worked closely together during their first few years of teaching, meeting during every school holiday to discuss their planning and teaching strategies, and to swap ideas. "There was paper everywhere as we wrote up ideas and assessment schedules for our classes" says Barbara. During these early years they found it helpful to work on some joint projects which they adapted to suit their different schools, and which subsequently had different outcomes.

In addition to these planning meetings, Kylie and Barbara met regularly to share what they'd done in class, to consider how their individual or shared units had worked out, and to examine each other's examples of student work resulting from the units.

Barbara started working as an NCEA assessor in Design Technology and Kylie later (at which stage the curriculum had changed to Technology) also became involved as an assessor. An advantage of working on the same assessment team, notes Barbara, was that it provided lots of travelling time in which the two of them could discuss their teaching, and how the student work they saw related to their own approaches.

Although, as they have gained in experience, Barbara and Kylie haven't needed to plan together, they continue to meet at least once a term to catch up and discuss their teaching. They also keep in contact via email to share ideas and discuss any problems. Barbara says that if stuck, they'll help each other out. "Although we have different styles of teaching, experiences and unit outcomes, we're on the same wavelength".

In 2006, and again in 2007, Barbara hand-picked two students to create a wearable arts costume for display in the front window at Te Papa. The students had to complete their costumes by August, in order to have them displayed at the same time as the World of Wearable Arts show in Wellington. See the Te Papa Wearable Arts case study and news article.

In addition to creating the costumes, the students had to install their work in one of the main Te Papa display windows. Barbara had discussed the project with Kylie, who volunteered to share her expertise in creating shop window displays to help the girls. She discussed her experience, and specific examples of work she had done in this field, and advised them on how best to approach such a challenge – giving them tips on the characteristics of a good window display such as visual effects, materials, lighting and distance.

The Queen Margaret/Te Papa partnership proved very successful, and in both years the school received positive comments from the public about the quality of the girls' work. Barbara and Jan Morris, Te Papa Store visual display manager, had agreed to continue the partnership in 2008.

Barbara identified Year 13 student Kay Leary as possessing the knowledge, skills and time management required to accomplish such a project, and they agreed that Kay would work on this as a whole-year assignment. Barbara met with Jan to discuss the project and how it would progress with just the one student. She suggested that this could be an opportunity to open it up and involve students from other schools, and proposed that four schools participate in the project with each responsible for one of the four main Te Papa windows.

Jan agreed that it would be easier having more than one student involved, and that it would be good for the public to see work from other schools, but decided against working with four schools. She was concerned about potential difficulties arising from dealing with a lot of people, especially as she wouldn't know how reliable other students might be in completing quality work to the deadline. Jan decided to limit the project to two schools, and as Barbara had discussed Kylie's teaching in detail over the years and knew what her students were capable of, she recommended that Wellington High School be included.

Te Papa formally invited Wellington High to work on the wearable arts project and Kylie selected two students, Megan Baxter and Ellen Gazdowics, who, she says, had done really well in Year 11 and were working successfully in Year 12. She decided that as mature, high-achieving students they would be good candidates, and could work successfully with a student from another school. Kylie incorporated the project as a two-term unit in the students' programme - this enabled them to build on the wearable arts work done in a previous unit when they had created mannequins dressed in paper costumes.

Kylie met with Jan to ascertain Te Papa's expectations and notes that it is a privilege to work with the museum which usually only takes the work of practising artists and was taking a risk that another college's students would also be able to "pull it off".

The partnership between the two schools would entail the students working independently on their projects, but cooperating in terms of theme. Kylie and Barbara would update each other throughout the project duration on how their students were doing, and the students would organise to contact each other and discuss their progress.

Ellen and Megan would present their work for NCEA assessment in Achievement Standards 2.1 (conceptual design), 2.2 (one-off solution) and 2.7 (skills, etc). Kay would submit her work for assessment in Achievement Standards 3.2, 3.6, and 3.7.

Delivery

Kay began working on her project in February, and was joined by Megan and Ellen in May. Their teachers kept in regular contact to discuss the students' progress and what still needed to be done. Barbara and Kylie encouraged the girls to keep in contact with each other, and to visit Te Papa together for client meetings. However, as meeting proved difficult the girls mainly discussed their project via email.

Their brief was quite open – To create a wearable arts outfit and window display. The students had to consider the Te Papa 10th anniversary slogan '10 years and onwards' and use colours which represented Te Papa. Perhaps because the brief gave them a lot of freedom, the girls found it quite difficult to define exactly what they needed to represent. After discussion with each other, their teachers, and Jan, they eventually decided that the idea of sustainability and protecting the environment for the future fitted with 'looking forward' and they adopted Jan's recommendation to use blue and green to represent Te Papa's location by the sea.

Kylie spent time with the students discussing window display work and giving them tips on how to create an effective display – as they developed the costumes the girls had to bear in mind that they would need to complement the Te Papa-designed background for the window. After installing their work, Kay, Ellen and Megan surveyed people studying the display and asked their opinion of the garments.

Kay

Kay researched the World of Wearable Art (WOW) show, other window displays, the Te Papa brand, and historical costumes. She also surveyed people who had attended or participated in previous WOW shows, to find out what they most enjoyed about the costumes. She had been advised by her teacher that she should come up with a brand new look and ideas, in order to stand out from the previous displays, and that her work would be more art than fashion.

While she considered design ideas, Kay trialled a variety of fabric manipulation techniques – making samples of bubbled, crinkled, sewn and knitted fabrics. She also trialled some wash-away techniques, and practised drying fabrics in 3D shapes.

Kay discussed her project and ideas with experts, such as Technology department technologist Marie Patterson, who has previously entered WOW, and technologist Lyndal Sheat, who works at a local embroidery shop. She showed her design ideas to her client and they decided she would develop the 'flowing dress with tights' combination; Kay sketched her concept designs and again asked her client which she preferred.

The final design featured a green under-dress decorated with flowers on the bodice, and with wire around the hips to give bulk. The over-skirt would be layers of sheer fabric in white and then gold covered in appliqué, and the costume would be finished with a collar in metallic blue/green, and silver tights.

Lyndal had suggested 'hot cutting' as an interesting technique that might suit the costume, and after trialling it Kay decided to incorporate this as the appliqué detail on her dress. It involved cutting mesh into shapes with a hot poker, free stitching it on the sewing machine, and sewing it on to fabric, but she adapted this process to make it faster.

Kay also trialled some other detailing techniques – trying out the use of beading, fabric patterning, stencilling, bubbling, and buttons on her fabric. She also conducted durability testing in which the fabric was"tugged', washed, and exposed to the sun. She found that the fabric was weak but kept its colour, and decided it was fit for purpose if she over-locked each section to make it stronger.

Kay refined her design during construction, substituting peacock feathers for the collar and using the collar fabric for the tights, having decided that the silver tights didn't complement the outfit. She also added paua shell to the bodice panels, to go with the 30 wire flowers she had made. She says that construction progressed smoothly, the only problem being that the weight of the outfit made it fall down – she compensated for this by using Velcro and making extra shoulder straps for support.

Megan and Ellen

Megan and Ellen started work on the project in term 2, and worked through all of term 3 to complete it. They researched wearable art but, to ensure a fresh approach, didn't look at previous Te Papa displays. Kylie suggested that the best approach for a collaborative work might be to create half the outfit each, allowing individual work with a common theme to bind it as an ensemble. The girls continually discussed their work throughout the project, looking at the overall creation and their individual sections. Kylie had instructed them that they must complete everything as if finishing it for a real garment – no hot glue guns!

The girls sketched some concept designs which they discussed with Jan, and after refining these consulted her again as to the final design. This incorporated a koru which would connect the two halves and also reflect the koru shape in the Te Papa thumbprint logo.

Ellen developed the top half for which she used mostly recycled or donated fabrics, such as old curtains from home which she painted and dyed. She made koru-shaped wire frames and wove ripped up fabric, tulle, and ribbon around the wire to create wings.

Ellen created the bodice using draping techniques –shaping white organza, using darts, pleats and tucks, and laced the back so that it could be adjusted to fit any size mannequin. She used the sewing machine as a drawing tool to create the sketching on top of the bodice, and appliqué techniques to make koru shapes – she says that this also added texture to the garment.

The original sleeve design incorporated light, "floaty" sleeves but Ellen decided they didn't suit the bold colours in the outfit and were too transparent, so instead used cotton covered in white organza.

Ellen experimented with different ideas for the bangles: papier-mâché, which she found quite time-consuming due to the drying/painting/sanding process; plaited fabric, which didn't give the effect she wanted; and strips of plastic cut from plastic jars and bottles. She decided to use the plastic, because it was light-weight and flexible enough to go easily over the mannequin's hands, and covered the strips in fabric which matched the bodice and wings and also Megan's costume.

Ellen made a headband but found it wouldn't stay on the Te Papa mannequin so she replaced it with a headdress made from a pin-tucked piece of nylon netting and held on with elastic.

Megan made her skirt from blue tulle, which she layered "so it would puff out a little bit" and covered with fabric leaves, the outside edge of which she appliquéd with koru spirals. She also made some small and large korus from painted calico, foam and wire. Megan had painted foam samples to decide which was most effective, and then made samples of the koru using different types of wire and different methods of fixing it to the foam. Her trialling also included testing the qualities of different types of sticky tape and painted tape but she decided these didn't work well, and that she would put the wire onto the foam rather than threading it through.

Megan also trialled a range of decorative stitching to determine which was most suitable for finishing edges to prevent fraying, and which looked best.

The small korus were made out of painted calico and Megan surveyed her classmates as to which colours looked better. She eventually decided to paint them in paua colours of pink and green using the dry-brush method (in which the brush skims the surface of the fabric).

Megan's design included legwarmers which she wanted to have a thick texture. She liked the look of her first sample knitted out of foam and ripped up fabric, but made samples using other techniques and materials, before concluding that the knitted version worked best.

She had planned a belt for the costume, and made samples – plaiting and weaving calico – but, after discussing it with Ellen, decided it would look better without a belt.

Outcomes

Teachers and students were pleased with the success of the costumes and window display, and appreciated the positive comments from members of the public about the project. Megan and Ellen note that despite the difficulties inherent in two people creating an artistic work together, their collaboration was successful and their outcome more than met the requirements. Megan, Ellen and Kay agree that, despite not being able to meet very often, it was helpful being able to discuss various aspects of the project and share ideas together through email.

Jan also comments on the difficulties involved in working together. "It was a bit of a mistake having two students work on the same piece, it would have been better if they'd done a whole outfit each which would have made it easier for them to visualise the whole design. However, the students were very eager, with lots of nice, creative ideas and both teachers were lovely to work with".

Barbara is pleased with another successful Te Papa project, and notes that it was easier working with just one student this time. She says that the collaboration between students wasn't as extensive as she had thought it could be – she had hoped they might take the initiative to use available technology for more than email, such as some type of consultative blog. She concludes that more teacher direction was obviously required and that more sophisticated use of technology for communication is something future students might choose to do.

Kylie says that, in addition to the experience of working for a real client and the satisfaction of successfully meeting the challenge of the project, her students benefitted through being able to add the work to their portfolios and CV. She says the work was a great learning curve for them in some aspects and involved a lot of trial and error. "They did some great sampling and it was just a whole process looking at the materials, their properties, how they would work and whether they were suitable. They even considered the different types of sticky tape to use with plastic and wire, and which worked best".

What next?

The Wearable Art at Te Papa project continued in 2009 with one Year 12 Queen Margaret student and three Year 13 Wellington High students working on a two-term project. This time each girl was responsible for the complete design of an outfit and window, to be completed in time for the WOW show in September.

With the experience of three successful Te Papa collaborations behind her, Barbara says she knows what to look out for, such as spending time going over the milestones with students, and telling them where they need to be at certain times of the year.

Kylie comments that continuing with a project such as this is not an automatic thing – it means evaluating which, if any, students could pull it off because it requires students who can be independent and don't have to be constantly kept on track.