Information on Loughborough

Dancers costume delight thanks to student designs

Posted on 28/12/2008

Loughborough University Website

Dancers costume delight thanks to student designs

St Patrick’s Day will see a local Irish dance group performing in spectacular brand new costumes after a special project which saw them join forces with Loughborough University and Charnwood Borough Council.

The group Keating School of Irish Dance are regulars at a variety of events across Charnwood. They promote Irish culture through their performances involving traditional music and dance. In order to enhance the quality and scope of their community activities the group decided to launch a project ‘Celtic Roots’ - to provide new costumes.

An initial grant from Charnwood Borough Council enabled the Group to approach Loughborough University’s School of Art and Design to begin work on designs for the costumes with printed textile students.

Forty second year printed textile students, under the leadership of Tina Frank, Programme Coordinator, Printed Textiles, were asked to come up with a new and innovative design for their uniforms which reflected the diversity of culture and environment of the local area. To select the winning design the Irish dancers were invited to the University where they were presented with the students’ designs. The dancers were faced with a difficult task of choosing a winner, with many wonderful designs to choose from.

Winning designer was Laura Blount who said: “I wanted to use inspiring images which linked to the Charnwood area so I focused on wild, beautiful and powerful environments and animals like deer and Bradgate Park, which I felt mirrored the nature of dance.”

Traditional Irish dancing dresses are expensive and beyond the reach of many families. In order to keep dancing accessible to all and the cost down the group have been busy fund raising to provide the costumes.

The new costumes will be unveiled for the first time when the group perform at Radio Leicester’s

Celtic Fringe evening, at the Charnwood Bowls Club on Friday 14th March.

Siobhain Clarke of the Keating School of Dance comments: ‘We are thrilled with the outcome of this project. Irish Dancing increases the confidence of our girls and keeps them fit and healthy. At the same time we are keeping Irish traditions alive and now we will have fabulous brand new costumes which will provide a tremendous boost to our performances.”