Junk Kouture 2020 - local schools in regional finals today

Castlepollard Community College and Mullingar Community School Mullingar have been announced as regional finalists of this year's Junk Kouture competition.

With almost 1,300 registered design teams, consisting of close to 3,600 students from across Ireland, it has been a hard task for the judging team to whittle it down to the initial 375 regional finalists.

Following on from the initial announcement, unsuccessful design teams will be given a further opportunity to join their peers at the live shows by a way of public vote. There are five ‘lifeline’ places up for grabs per region in comparison to just one place in previous years.

Castlepollard Community College and their design titled 'Darkness into Light' are due to appear at the Western Regional Finals on Thursday March 5, TF Royal in Castlebar, while Mullingar Community College will present 'We Shine Different'.

About Junk Kouture

Creativity is the driving factor of every single aspect of Junk Kouture, as post-primary school students across the island are challenged to produce high-end designs from junk!

The star of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Michelle Visage, will join the judging panel with The X-Factor’s Louis Walsh to lend their expertise to proceedings to help their fellow judges Dr Tracey Fahey from LIT, Jane Leavey of Griffith College, and former winner and LSAD graduate Stephen McLaughlin on the night.

Regional finals dates

Northern Region, Millennium Forum, Derry, February 27

Eastern Region, The Helix, Dublin, March 2

South-Eastern Region, The Helix, Dublin, March 3

Western Region, TF Royal Theatre, Castlebar, March 5

Southern Region, University Concert Hall, Limerick, March 6

Final, 3Arena, Dublin, 30 April.

Mullingar Community College

The name of this piece is ‘We Shine Different’ modelled by first year student Katie Fleming.

This piece was created by a group of talented enthusiastic first year students Katie Fleming, Kellie Finn Colgan, Alan Scally and Anthony Mahon with the help of their entire class.

The students collected broken Christmas tree bobbles and cut and manipulated them to create a mosaic design.

They also collected used tin foil, lids and broken and scratched CDs and DVDs.

The idea of ‘We Shine Different’ is to represent all young people making the transition from primary to secondary school.

The group talked about the fear and worry of the unknown and then the realisation that they could shine in their new surrounding.

This project is a statement that you can shine in your own way and you can be resilient to the knock backs that anyone can face in their lives.

Castlepollard Community College

The inspiration behind our outfit originated from ‘warriors’, past and present. I have always been fascinated with the garments they wore, the design of and materials used in creating their clothing. I enjoyed looking through books and online and researching outfits.

The inspiration behind our design leads to the theme of our outfit. Inner strength, inner battles, and committing to fight on, are all depicted in our outfit. Every day, people are fighting a silent, inner battle. Our design encourages the fighting through of these battles and allows us all to become our own version of warriors.

The outer cloak represents a shroud of possible problems people may face in their day to day lives. The leaves on the cloak depict numerous problems that people may encounter. These problems can become burdensome and heavy. We can allow them to entrap us or we can choose to shed ourselves of these troubles and fight our way through them.

The cloak is on wheels, and when it moves it appears like it is floating. It is heavy and dark to represent the problems people carry around with them. The recyclable material we used was the inner tubes of tyres. These were kindly donated by Mileage Tyres, Mullingar. We cut the tyres into leaves, painted them gold and assembled them into a cloak. We created the shoulders and hood from bicycle tyres, donated by Outdoor Escape shop in Mullingar.

Our inner outfit represents a beam of light or a ray of hope. It has a lightness to it yet radiates strength. We become stronger due to the battles we fight and win, and we can wear these experiences as an armour. We are protected as we step from ‘Darkness into Light’.

This inner outfit was created from old butchers mesh, donated by Kepak, Ballymahon. We also used bicycle chains, keyrings, metal hoops and chains to create an armour effect. We recycled an old skirt and boots and used nuts, bolts, door knobs, sander discs, rivets and old scrap metal. The inner outfit is silver in colour and highlights the brightness and hope that exists in all of us.

– David Tulgara, Robert Kennedy, Jack Scally

Model: Sian McLaverty