Family Explorer Activities: Fashion Show
Artist, Sian, and little artist, Aoife, demonstrate how you can use clothes and movements to transform yourself into a different character.
This activity is inspired by our Grace Before Jones exhibition, exploring the life, works, and collaborations of the iconic singer, Grace Jones.
If you have a go at the activity, we'd love to see your creations on social media #NCmaking
Download all three activities here, or keep scrolling.
The Fashion Show
Grace Jones uses costume and clothing to show us different sides of her personality. She tells a story of her life by how she dresses, how she stands and how she moves.
You don’t have to bring a dress up box with you into the gallery space, you have everything you need to transform into a new character just by wearing them in a slightly different way.
Clothing and costumes can help you transform into a new character. You can use your imagination and be anyone or be anywhere. You can perform the personality of a different person, the swagger, the grace and the performance.
Turn your coat the wrong way round. Could it become a strange creature prowling around the space?
Make exciting costumes with the clothes you have on, changing them around and swapping to alter how they look.
Take Centre Stage and Strut the Catwalk
Costume Creations
Let’s go to the next level in our costume changing!
Think about hunting out new costumes at home.
Borrow clothes from different people in your family; think about how you could use belts, scarfs, tights, and hairbands in different ways.
How many fashionable, funny, or strange outfits can you come up with?
Explore wrapping and tying, wearing clothes backwards or upside down. You could even wear so many layers that it changes the way you move!
Plan a fashion show, see if your audience can guess who you are!
You could even give yourself a mission to change your entire costume in 30 seconds.
Get your family to time you and see how many different characters you can be.
Power Pose
Grace Jones experiments with different poses and different clothes to change herself into someone or something else.
She pushes herself beyond just being human, transforming herself beyond the stereotypes of who other people see her.
Collect clothes from around the house and think about the fabric and materials.
Using this list of different themes found within the GRACE BEFORE JONES exhibition, see if you can dress or curate yourself with a simple costume change and turn into the identities of GRACE.
Theme list
· PERFORMER
· MACHINE
· SCULPTURE
· OUTRAGE
· POWERHOUSE
These activities were created by Associate Artist, Sian Watson-Taylor
Vote for Us! Kids in Museums most Family Friendly Museum Award
If you have enjoyed taking part in any of our digital family activities we would really appreciate you shouting about it! Nominations are open for ‘Kids in Museums:Family Friendly Museum Award 2021”. You can place your vote here. Thank you!
Share Your Feedback, complete our Family Survey
Working digitally, means we miss all those lovely conversations we would usually have with you, sharing ideas, listening, and seeing how you respond to our workshops. It is difficult to get feedback when we don't see you and this would really help.
The survey takes about 10 mins or less to complete and it will really help our team to understand more about what you thought ready for when we are back together at Nottingham Contemporary. You can fill out our survey by clicking here.
We'd love to hear what you think.