Game of Thrones costume makers have switched mythical dress for medical gowns in a bid to help the NHS amid the coronavirus pandemic.
With shortages of adequate Personal Protection Equipment (PPE) for NHS staff across the UK, businesses and individuals have felt compelled to help out as the crisis rages.
Last week, 99-year-old war veteran Captain Tom Moore walked 100 laps of his garden in Bedfordshire to raise a staggering £23m and counting for the NHS.
Now, former costume staff on the global smash-hit TV series Game of Thrones (GoT) have joined the army of volunteers that are producing medical scrubs for hospitals here.
Shannon Dooner (29), originally from south London but now living in Antrim, has teamed up with 10 other ex-GoT staff to produce the gowns.
She told Sunday Life: “We all work in film and television, a lot of us on Game of Thrones, and it’s great working together again.
“It’s the same kind of atmosphere which we would have had at work and also some sort of normality to our days and structure which is very welcome.
“It takes about four hours to make one gown so it’s a lot of work, especially when I didn’t quite know what I was doing at first. My level of experience was quickly mending costumes on set before this.
“I had actually only made my first ever item of clothing a few weeks ago so this has been a bit of a baptism of fire. I’m very thankful for the help of the group and my housemate Rachel Blair, otherwise I’d be taking a lot longer to make them.
“Originally our target was just to raise a couple of hundred pounds and within a week we had raised over £3,000.
“That should make about 200 sets of scrubs and the rest of the money left over is going to be used to make masks, I believe.
“We started a group chat and realised we had taken on a huge amount of sponsorship very quickly and wanted to make the best use of the leftover money so masks seemed the obvious choice once we have the gowns made,” she said.
“We all know each other through work and are all creatives making costumes and other things so it’s fun in that sense, there is definitely a sense of camaraderie.”
NI wardrobe supervisor Caroline Hill, who also worked on GoT, has taken responsibility for organising and managing the project.
Shannon said: “It was Caroline who sent my housemate Rachel a message saying she was thinking about getting a group together to do something for the NHS.
“So, I’ve kind of been roped into it,” she joked.
“I wasn’t the most experienced seamstress as it isn’t really my background but Rachel is a good teacher.”
Shannon added: “Caroline has been great dropping off materials at the start of the week and collecting finished work at the end; she’s also been helping us out with our equipment, too. She’s been doing a lot of driving as well as we are all dotted around the east coast.
“We’re on week two now and already some of the gowns are being used at the City Hospital and the Royal Victoria which is amazing.”
Despite only starting work on the gowns three weeks ago, the team of 11 is now steadily producing scrubs to NHS standards.
Shannon says the support from the public has been overwhelming. “We have been getting crazy amounts of feedback and messages of thanks, we honestly had no idea all this would happen.”
She added: “We’re going to keep going until the fabric runs out and I think at the moment there’s no plans to make more but that could change.
“For the time being we have quite a lot of work to keep us going.”
Donations for the project can be made at gofundme.com/f/srubs-and-masks-for-nhs-staff-ni
Belfast Telegraph
