Design A Lifer
Overview
Subject Areas: Art, Language Arts, Climate Change, Fashion
This activity is inspired by the Lifers Exhibition and Noelle Hamlyn's Artist's Statement:
Lifers exposes the hubris of our addiction to fashion. Human activities have irreversibly changed our Earth, but in this Anthropocene epoch, the Sixth Mass Extinction, we seem oblivious to the ruinous folly of our obsession with fashion. We are sinking in landfills and drowning under the weight of our inaction. Without consideration for environmental contamination or human tragedy, we continue unfettered, to make more, buy more, and discard more clothing.
Inspired by the Titanic, 36 Lifers float amid whispered echoes of disaster and prescient images of Georgian Bay. The rescued, repurposed, hand crafted lifejackets offer couture protection, ready to help us drift away in the aftermath of cataclysmic catastrophe. As water levels rise, what’s trending for the looming environmental collapse? One must dress appropriately.
-Noelle Hamlyn
Step by step instructions for this activity are also on the ROM Learning Portal and on the Student Site.
Note: This activity can be done in the analog or digital versions outlined in the Learning Portal version of the activity first, and then interpreted in Minecraft.
Note: This is the only activity that is definitively more effective as an individual activity than a group activity. If you wish your class to engage in Phase 2 in groups or as a whole class, a video coming shortly will instruct students how to create additional copies of the Lifer statues.
Learning Goals
Find personal connections in the immersive experience of Lifers.
Reflect critically on the lifespan of our clothing and the impact the fashion industry has on water quality and climate change.
Create an artwork in a medium of choice that explores this reflection in connection with a personal item of clothing.
Explain the meaning behind the artwork in an artist’s statement.
Background Information
When Noelle is creating a Lifer, she thinks about the style of the clothing, how it was originally meant to be worn, how it was made, what the worn spots say about how its original owner wore it, and how it was decorated.
Noelle wants to remind us that every piece of clothing holds a story worth preserving, and Lifers help to tell that story.
At the same time, Lifers also make us think about how the ways we make and use our clothes affects the Earth around us, The effects of the fashion industry affect water, the climate, the workers involved, and the waste we produce.
By putting the effort into creating something like a Lifer, we can train ourselves to think more carefully about how our actions affect these “Four Ws,” and how we can imagine better climate futures.
Materials
Pencil
Eraser
Sustainable Style Minecraft World
If doing an analogue art piece to act as a template for the Minecraft build:
Colouring tools (marker, paint, etc.)
Glue or glue sticks
Fabric scraps (optional)
Digital design tools (optional
Instructions
Step 1:
Explore the Sustainable Style tour to discover how the fashion industry affects Water, Warming, Workers, and Waste,
Teacher notes:
These facts can all be found on Stop 1 of the tour.
Step 3:
Use an extra piece of paper, a Google or Powerpoint Slide Deck, or a word cloud generator to give weight to your words in step 2.
Words that you think are more important should be larger, and words that you think are less important should be smaller.
Arrange your words into a word cloud, or use a word cloud generator to do it for you.
Step 4:
Using the word cloud you have created, choose something you wear now (or have worn in the past) that:
Is important to you
You can connect to some or all of the words in your word cloud, especially the bigger ones.
Describe the piece of clothing you chose, and why you chose it.
Teacher Notes:
You can instruct students to do this on the worksheet, in a book in Minecraft, or in any other medium of your choosing.
Step 5:
“Tailor” the piece of clothing you chose in Step 4 to fit onto the Lifer statue in the centre of town.
You may want to sketch your design on paper or the worksheet template first.
You can replace existing blocks with new blocks
You can add blocks and items to change the shape of the Lifer.
Teacher notes:
Encourage students to make a backup copy of their world before they start breaking the lifer statue.
You can follow the instructions on the web and worksheet versions of the activity to create a polished "analog" lifer before converting the Minecraft town statue. Options include:
Draw your design onto the Lifer template and colour it in.
Cut apart photos of your piece of clothing and use the pieces to cover your Lifer template. (Only do this if you don’t wear it any more!)
If your chosen clothing is part of the Class Depository [link to relevant activity], cut scraps of fabric and use them to cover your Lifer template.
Use digital tools and photos of your piece of clothing to cover a digital version of your Lifer.
Step 6:
When creating a display of art like Lifers, artists will write an Artist’s Statement to explain the meaning behind the art.
Find and read Noelle Hamlyn’s Artist Statement in the Sustainable Style Tour.
Teacher Notes:
This can be found on Stop 3 of the tour.
Step 7:
In a book and quill, write your artist's statement.
Add a photo of your lifer.
Sign the book when you are finished
Export a PDF of your artist's statement.
Add it to a lectern in front of the lifer.
Teacher Notes:
If you want your students to create an analog version of their artist's statement, the ROM site has an analog version of this activity.
Step 8
Teacher Notes:
This is listed as an optional step on the student site.
You can use pdf printouts of student lifer designs and artists' statements to create a classroom Lifers exhibition.
Add student word clouds for an additional layer to the display.
Follow up:
Thought Questions:
What do you wonder about clothing and fashion?
What did you discover about clothing by exploring the Lifers exhibition?
How can clothing help tell someone’s story?
How can art inspire change?