Dressing Up in Museums

Dressing up activities in museum spaces can help visitors of all ages to feel immersed in a time or culture. Over the years, I've worked with a few different organisations to create dressing up resources and have written a Masters dissertation on the topic - 'Uses and Effects of Replica Dress within Interactive Museum Experiences'.

Creating dressing up resources can be a low cost and highly engaging way of making a museum space accessible and interactive. Utilising the wide ranging skills of existing volunteer teams can create a resource that can be altered, mended and duplicated in the future, without needing large budgets for maintenance or replacement purchases.

In my role at Weston Museum I have coordinated volunteer teams to create a wide range of dressing up resources, including:
- Dinosaur tails for little children (brilliant for cute photo opportunities!)
- Stone Age outfits of fur and leather cloaks and tunics
- Bronze Age and Iron Age outfits of plain and checked woollen cloaks and tunics
- Roman outfits of togas, tunics and palla wraps
- Saxon and Viking outfits of woollen hoods, fur cloaks, hangarok apron dresses and pretend chain mail shirts and hoods
- Victorian outfits of affluent dresses and jackets, waistcoats, pinnys and mop caps

Other projects have included:
- Cockroach and eyeball outfits for the Gosport Submarine Museum
- Nutcracker and ballerina garments for Killerton House

My training in pattern cutting and historical costume has meant that I am able to create patterns from scratch that are acceptably authentic but also suitable for children to dress up in quickly and easily. I can then teach others how to put together these simple items from repurposed materials and generate enough dressing up for a full class of children.