LOVE COATS

Funded by Unilever and partnered by UNHCR Jordan, International Refugee Development, Norwegian Refugee Council, Oxfam and NRS International, the LOVE COATS project was born out of public enthusiasm and arising questions from the Dress For Our Time Project. **

Seeking answers, Helen was invited by UNHCR to Za’atari Refugee Camp in Jordan in March 2016, where the original tent used to make the above dress came from. Seven visits have followed and a new form of Participatory Action Research has developed.

The process of designing for urgent world need, starts with listening and suspending a creative response until one has truly heard what is required. Working with the Tiger Girls of Za’atari (age 9 – 18) Helen designed the project around their specific needs & wishes. (To be warm in Winter, to learn new making skills/love of fashion, to have something to gift).

Returning to London she created a prototype coat (the artefact) as a material manifestation of the heard wishes and presented it back to the girls to kick-start a co creation process, whereby they made their own garments, they named LOVE COATS.

The co designed workshop format brought together other makers, NGO’S and camp teachers and in July 2016 they worked with 29 girls, teaching new making skills to create coats which reflected their own identities and sense of self.

Collaborating with a refugee film maker captured the process from our arrival into camp, to the first ever catwalk show in a refugee camp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_fXZQy_Zs

The project has led to a new role for Helen in camp, uniquely positioned between NGO’s and refugees creating original bodies of work, which deliver programs of training and livelihood creation for women.

Work at the camp since has led to a five year MOU between LCF, Sheffield University and UNHCR Jordan.

link to the project film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_fXZQy_Zs

• http://www.dress4ourtime.org/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr_fXZQy...