Hundreds of folk culture performances celebrating seasonal customs and heritage take place across the UK each year. These are usually community events that use music and dance to bring to life historic days, stories and myths. It is the commonality of costume that brings people together in these colourful, lively celebrations – whether rural morris dancing, London-based Pearlies or the Afro-Caribbean/Brazilian-influenced Carnival.

The ‘Making Mischief’ exhibition will look through the lens of folk costume as a unifying form of identify and expression. Led by Centre for Fashion Curation at London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London, the project is in partnership with the Museum of British Folklore and Compton Verney Art Gallery. The project will explore, document and celebrate this heritage and bring this to life at two major immersive exhibitions.

Oral histories, film and photography will be catalogued to record this heritage that might otherwise be lost. The result will be a multi-faceted re-interpretation of British folk custom that future generations can learn from.

This project received funding through our Dynamic Collections campaign.