A Laois sustainable fashion educator, advocate and designer has been honoured at a ceremony recently for her work.
Miriam Keegan, from Emo, was at the Mary Immaculate College Awards recently where she was presented with an MIC Alumni Award.
Miriam was deeply inspired by her grandmother’s abilities in sewing and dressmaking and always had a keen interest and talent in sewing herself.
Miriam graduated from MIC in 2016 with a Bachelor of Education, specialising in Visual Art Education.
During her time at MIC, Miriam was awarded the Carmel Naughton Foundation scholarship to study at Notre Dame University, USA.
Here, she worked with the children and staff of Perley Fine Arts Academy, creating a collaborative textile mascot that still hangs in the school today.
Miriam credits Anne-Marie Morrin, Lecturer in Visual Arts, MIC for her recognition and belief in Miriam’s talent in textiles as being one of the catalysts for her career.
Miriam spent five years teaching in Laois and Kildare and won the Highly Commended Award at the Department of Justice’s ‘Someone Like Me’ Awards in 2016 for a whole-school collaborative art project.
In 2018, Miriam began studying Fashion Design and set up a sewing club in her school for children to learn the basics of sewing.
In 2020, during the pandemic, Miriam created the first-of-its-kind EPV teacher online summer course on sustainable fashion in the classroom.
Since then, more than 350 teachers have completed this course, and this year will see the introduction of two new courses, ‘Sustainable Costume Making in the Classroom’ and ‘Sustainable Fashion and Maths’, both approved by the Department of Education.
In 2021, Miriam was one of the select recipients of the Fulbright-EPA award, which allowed her to complete her Master of Science in Fashion and Apparel Studies and a Graduate Certificate in Social Responsibility and Sustainable Fashion Business at the University of Delaware.
Upon graduation this year, Miriam began working for the Fair Labor Association, where she is part of the social compliance team, advocating for garment workers’ rights.
In October, Miriam led the fashion brand Aoife McNamara to become the first fashion brand in Ireland to achieve BCorp certification, one of the most rigorous and respected sustainability certifications in the world.
Miriam is currently studying for a Graduate Diploma in Carbon Footprinting and Life Cycle Analysis at UCD, alongside her work.
Miriam’s mission is to bring awareness, education and solutions for sustainability in fashion, whether it be for teachers, consumers, children through sewing or for businesses through innovation and transparency.
Also awarded MIC Alumni Awards for 2023 were: Limerick hurling captain, Declan Hannon; Kerry football legend, Tomás Ó Sé and RTÉ journalist Petula Martyn.
The annual MIC College Awards Ceremony, held in the Lime Tree Theatre, saw almost 150 students, graduates and alumni from MIC being recognised for their academic and other notable achievements with just under €600,000 presented on the night in scholarships and bursaries.
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