Teacher's pride as amazingly creative students make costumes out of old Express & Star newspapers
Pupils from a Black Country school have got creative to turn old newspapers into costumes worthy of the Paris fashion walkway.
The year eight pupils at Wolverhampton Girls High School were given a task of taking old copies of the Express & Star and creating Couture dresses as part of a French-themed day during the school's Celebration Week.
More than 180 pupils took part in the activity across their form groups, working on cutting up the papers, designing the cut and shape of the dresses, making accessories and gluing pieces together, before displaying their dresses on top of mannequins.
Foreign languages teacher Julia Garrett helped to organise the activity, which followed a French cafe with croissants and the chance to do souvenir shopping and play Boules, before spending the afternoon making the dresses.
She said the idea of creating the dresses had been done before and said the pupils had loved it and really got creative with the task.
She said: "This was last done in 2017 when a teacher here got in contact with the Express & Star and got lots of copies of the paper to make the dresses with, then I saw the clip from the Express & Star about it on our mood board and we decided to do it again.
"I've just been blown away by the work they've done as, in 2017, they had a whole day to do it, whereas they only had around two hours start to finish and the works they've done are all creative and very professional.
"I was very nervous about doing this task as I'm a foreign languages teacher with no art training, but I'm so proud of what they've done and they've totally smashed it."
Ms Garrett said the six dresses would be displayed in the school hall underneath a balloon arch set in blue, white and red colours, along with the different accessories, which included hats and handbags.
She said she felt like a proud parent and said the school would look to do a similar task in the future.
She said: "They have really knocked it out of the park and we as a school are so proud of them for their creativity and teamwork.
"They just enjoyed it so much and the creativity was stunning, so I definitely think we could do this again in the future as what they did in under two hours was amazing."
