About Us
In July 2014, the former departments of Music and Theatre at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, joined together to form the Fountain School of Performing Arts. Funded by a generous $10 million donation by the Fountain family, it is the only university performing arts school east of Montreal and brings a range of new opportunities to students of Music, Theatre and Cinema and Media Studies in safe and inclusive spaces.
The Costume Studies program at the Fountain School is unique in North America, and offers a four-year BA with Honours in Theatre (Costume Studies). The program, founded in 1976, has a strong historical focus on both theatre and museum work, and stresses applied skills, along with research and academic skills. The applied skills are taught using a conservatory approach, while the research and academic components are imparted through a more traditional university pathway. In this way, students achieve a well-rounded education, equally able to turn their hand to creating costumes from any historical period and for both genders, and to the kinds of problem solving which have come to be expected of graduates with a broad liberal arts education.
The Costume Studies program has been accumulating historical dress artifacts as part of its teaching collection since 1992. Students are able to examine these items as part of their classroom studies, or use them as the focus for research projects, honours theses, and design inspiration. We are putting the collection online as part of an initiative to improve access, and to enable students to dive deeper into this very special shared resource.
While the collection is not available for public viewing, we will do our best to answer enquiries from researchers interested in specific items. If you have any information about materials in the collection, we invite you to reach out and share your knowledge with us.