The group wanted to look at the way different cultures had influenced fashion and clothing today and to create a series of costumes that reflected this. We wanted these costumes to be worn by dancers in specific locations around the castle site as part of a promenande performance echoing ideas of the silk route as well as the personal journey that may have bought these fabrics to Britian.
As a group we started by looking at textiles and clothing from our own cultures. We wanted to create costumes that showed a range of Cultural influences, we decided to work with textile artist Nadim Chaudry whose own work uses a wide range of fabrics to explore cultural and personal themes.
Looking at textiles from our own cultures
Meeting Nadim
We decided to create four costumes and got into groups to plan and design each one.
The Costumes were-
The Long Gallery Costumes, inspired by Yinka Shonibare, Vivienne Westwood and the paintings in the Long Gallery, there were to have a playful and more traditionally European feel.
The bandstand, the most amibitious costume, inspired by Caroline Broadhead, the costume also represented Chinese culture in particular the story of the pheonix.
The Staircase costume, this was to be more tribal and earthy a costume, we took the wrought iron leaves of the window guard as a starting point for these costumes.
A group of about 12 young people from the Illuminate group spent 10 days creating the Costumes. Most detail about the project cand be found on the Illuminate blog, Illuminate-collective@blogspot.co.uk.
