Students create costumes for St. Paul’s Carnival

Fairfield has been very fortunate to work with St. Paul’s Carnival Education programme during the last two terms of this academic year. On May 12th students spent a whole day with a brilliant creative team learning about African Caribbean culture from Rich Ferron with some singing, dancing and discussion and then creating costumes with Jenny Simmons and Katie Taylor; a costume designer and maker who’s background includes work for Eurovision, Brit Awards, high-end TV, BBC programmes and period dramas such as Wolf Hall, The Gentlemen Netflix series.

Katie said -“My design interpretation of “Roots of Resistance” (the Carnival theme this year) is the earth and its eco systems, each school will be given their own theme within this, ranging from the core of the earth, to the flora and fauna, up to the cosmos.”

The students created collaborative textile art, individual sleeves, belt and head pieces, using a variety of materials. Working with great focus they worked hard all day to create some original work that will be showcased whilst dancing at the carnival this year.

This will be followed up with weekly workshops with local dancer Louis Eboa who will be teaching and creating the carnival dance with students into Term 6 – more details to follow!

The team were very impressed with the calm atmosphere and focus of our students – well done all involved! Our students said:

Rose: “It was lovely”

Alifya: “It was an amazing day, a bit stressful making 3D shapes but fun”

Olivia: “Painting the fabric together was fun”

Eloise: “It was fun to start the day with dancing and singing”

Ayo: “It was a fun experience and helped my creative juices flow”