Lively Museum
- An Educational Perspective

November 26, 2014

"Let's design an outfit for the Iwami Art Museum!" - Workshop
Design, Production, and Fashion Show

Risa Hirota, Iwami Art Museum

I want children to experience the joys and hardships of making something. That desire gave rise to the workshop titled "Let's design an outfit for the Iwami Art Museum!" in August this year.

This workshop asked participants to design an outfit for staff of the museum working on the floor and at the ticket booth. Participants were also tasked with producing the outfit, and showcasing it in a fashion show. The project lasted about a month with help from volunteer staff and curator-in-training student staff. Our museum collection focuses on fashion designs, so this project was a good fit for us; we had just opened an exhibit showcasing the outfits of airline companies (as a part of the exhibit highlighting prominent Japanese products and the beauty of their design from the 1950s and 1960s). A total of six girls between third and sixth grade participated in the workshop.

On the first day, a very simple lecture on design was given by one of the museum curators, followed by an interview session with the staff wearing the current outfits. The participants asked the staff about what they liked in the outfit, where they wanted improvements, and what their jobs entailed. They also observed the staff in action, focusing on movements of the body. The girls then began designing the outfits, taking in the information obtained through the lecture and interviews. Some participants incorporated the red-brown color theme prominent on the walls and floor of the museum into their designs, saying "I can't imagine it in any other color!" while others designed long-length tops for jobs that required a lot of crouching.

Preparations for making the outfit required cooperation from all of the staff. We worked hard to draw the patterns for each outfit, using the design sketches as our guide, and to order the correct fabric patterns and thickness to match, so that the final product would match the design sketches as much as possible. The actual production of the outfit was done by the participants where possible, including some of the more difficult operations. None of the girls had any sewing experience, so we started with the basics of how to use a sewing machine, but by the end of the second day of production, the girls had no trouble with backstitching and tying up loose ends.

The last portion of the workshop was the fashion show. Each participant wore her own designed outfit and stood on stage. The designs were presented with song and dance in a musical-like manner, with help from a producer of a theatrical company and a pianist specializing in improvisation. Among the performances was an original song with lyrics incorporating the feelings of the participants, such as "it was a lot of hard work to make the outfit, but I would like to do more of it." The fashion show turned out to be an incredible success for the participants but also for the staff who were involved in this project.