OWINGS MILLS, Md. — Students from The Jemicy School in Owings Mills are making headlines on a national stage during Dyslexia Awareness Month. Their documentary "Fashion with a Purpose" will premiere this weekend at the world's largest high school film festival in Times Square, showcasing how learning differences don't limit dreams.
The documentary tells a story of inclusion through the lens of students who understand being different. It captures fashion design students from The Jemicy School creating adaptive clothing for clients of Penn-Mar Human Services — adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
"A student came to me with the idea for my fashion design classes to design and fabricate inclusive clothing for adults. At that time it was an exciting new opportunity for our students to learn fashion design while thinking about design in terms of inclusivity," Pauline Savage said.
The Jemicy School is going big time at Times Square with a new documentary
Savage serves as Visual Arts Department Chair at The Jemicy School.
Penn-Mar clients design their dream outfits, then take center stage on the runway with the students who created them.
"Some of my students were nervous to meet their models but once they met their models and understood that it was their job to help the model realize their vision, all of a sudden, this project was their inspiration. They were willing to do things that they would never do for themselves," Savage said.
The documentary became a two-year project requiring skills many Jemicy students struggle with, like organization and processing.
"Many of our students are gifted in the visual arts, but even more of them are unencumbered by their language-based learning differences when they're working in the visual arts. We don't have to use words," Savage said.
Faye Tennis was one of four students who created the film. Tennis lives with severe ADHD and executive function challenges.
"The fashion design team was going in and speaking with the people at Penn-Mar and trying to figure out what they wanted to see themselves wearing, what would make them feel confident. I thought that was so touching. We just wanted to film it," Tennis said.
She's now a sophomore at the University of Maryland.
"Working on this documentary, especially being able to picture what I want the entire story to look like, that takes a lot of organizational skills and I was able to hone that in, through what Jemicy has taught me, about my executive function and how I can use it to my advantage," Tennis said.
This weekend, Tennis and her former classmates will watch their work premiere in Times Square, showing that learning differences don't limit dreams.
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