Assemble! Dress, Recognition and the Right to Appear
This interdisciplinary pilot investigates the relationship between dress and political and cultural expression, asking: Under what conditions does dress facilitate, constrain, or disrupt political participation and cultural belonging?
Rooted in performance-based civic action across the UK since 2000 — _from Extinction Rebellion to street carnival — _the project treats dress as a persistent, underexamined dimension of democratic and cultural life: a means through which dressed bodies become visible, or remain unseen, as political actors, and through which claims to participate are recognised or refused. Costume may form part of this, but the broader concern is the everyday role of dress in political expression, drawing on vernacular traditions of cultural and political identity.
The team connects researchers from history, human geography, fashion design, fine art, constitutional politics and law. Fashion design contributes material and semiotic expertise; history and human geography situate dress within vernacular traditions; fine art opens possibilities for participatory inquiry; constitutional politics and law examine dress as expression, assembly and association under the European Convention on Human Rights. The project does not presume dress is emancipatory: it aims to surface how law, institutions and norms structure who can appear and participate in public space.
The pilot’s primary outcome is conceptual and methodological: a sharper understanding of dress as political and cultural practice, established through testing which research methods do and don’t work. Unsuccessful methods are as valuable as successful ones, since both will inform an intended follow-on project exploring third-party and policy implications.
Empirically, rooted in place and community, the pilot works with two community groups in Greater Manchester, supported by the People’s History Museum, using object elicitation, go-along walks, and social listening. Alongside academic beneficiaries, it will give these communities deeper awareness and practical means to use dress more effectively for political expression.
Funder: North West Crucible
Project value: £9,708.01
Project team (Group members in bold):
- Dr Benjamin Wild, Man. Met.
- Dr Samantha Wilkinson, Man. Met.
- Dr Ruth Eaton, Man. Met.
- Dr Nicky Gillibrand, University of Salford
- Dr Martin Fowler, University of Cumbria
Project duration: 9 months: November 2026 – July 2027
