TU Dublin staff and students in Halloween Makeathon at LauraLynn Children’s Hospice
Halloween celebrations began early for the children of LauraLynn Children's Hospice in Sandyford on Thursday, 24 October, with several residents and users of the Hospice having a fantastically spooky time wearing costumes specially crafted for their wheelchairs by staff and students from TU Dublin's Tallaght Campus. The LauraLynn Centre was overrun by witches, mermaids, superheroes and more, with all participants ecstatic with their costumes.
For the fourth year in a row, several disciplines within TU Dublin, including Marketing, Engineering and Media Production, and 3DAssist, collaborated to create the terrifyingly cool costumes. This year, the Makeathon project was funded by N-TUTORR, enabling the involvement of six local secondary and primary schools in the design of wheelchair costumes for LauraLynn service users.
Children in St Patrick's Curtlestown Primary School.
Commenting on the Halloween Parade, Robbie O'Connor of the School of Mechanical Engineering and 3DAssist said, “We have such a great time helping out the costumes at LauraLynn. All the students and staff really enjoy participating in the parade, but most of all, we love meeting the wonderful children and families in LauraLynn.”
All of the Hocus Pocus started in early October when students and lecturers took a trip to the LauraLynn Centre to meet the kids and parents. During this visit, Engineering students 3D scanned wheelchairs to start planning ideas. Marketing students spoke to parents about the spooky suggestions they had for costumes, and Media students documented the event. From there, staff and students began brewing in their cauldrons for sketches and plans to make perfect replicas of what the kids envisioned.
Continuing, O'Connor said, "The success of this parade and the costumes couldn't have happened without TU Dublin students and lecturers volunteering their time. None of this would have been possible without the N-TUTORR funding, as well as generous help from Google and the Project Management Group. Students and lecturers were thrilled to be involved in such an exciting and fulfilling event."