The spooky fun spirited parade at LauraLynn has returned

Halloween is just around the corner and TU Dublin and LauraLynn are excited as ever for the holiday.

Celebrations began with an annual Halloween parade which took place on Thursday, October 24, at the Children’s Hospice in Sandyford.

Users and one resident of the Hospice who are wheelchair bound, had a fantastically spooky time wearing costumes specially crafted for their wheelchairs, by students and staff from the TU Dublin Tallaght Campus.

The LauraLynn centre was overrun by wizards, superhero’s and spectacularly scary skeletons and more with all participants ecstatic with their BOO-tiful costumes.

The parade was an amazing start to the Halloween festivities with the kids, their siblings and parents all geared up for the 31st.

Several departments within TU Dublin have gotten involved in this amazing project including Marketing, Engineering and Media Production with students from all year groups crafting the costumes.

TUD has used 3D assist to create the terrifyingly cool costumes.

Engineering students are tasked with 3D scanning the children and chairs and designing solutions to solve the physical constraints of the costume.

3D assist is an industrial grade scanner that will allow the students to do this.

This couldn’t have been made possible without funding from Google.

The entire project is headed by Robbie O’Connor, lecturer in engineering, who has been running the event since 2021 when Robbie saw an opportunity for students to give something back while also collaborating with other students on a fun project.

All of the Hocus Pocus started on the 3rd of October when students and lecturers took a trip to the LauraLynn centre to meet the kids and parents.

Some meetings were hosted online while others took place in the centre.

During this visit, Engineering students took measurements of the wheelchairs so that they could start planning ideas, Marketing students spoke to parents about all the spooky suggestions they had for costumes and Media students documented the entire event.

From there, staff and students began brewing in their cauldrons for sketches and plans to make perfect costumes.

TU Dublin, next year, will partner with local secondary schools for the LauraLynn event which will invite TY students to create the ideas and sketches for the Halloween costumes.

This move will continue to evolve this growing project and get even more people involved with the event and the LauraLynn charity.

The success of this parade and the costumes couldn’t have happened without TUD students and lecturers volunteering.

We received funding from the N-TUTORR project as well as generous help from Google and Project Management Group.

Students and lecturers were thrilled to be involved in such an exciting and fulfilling event as it means so much to TUD.

For further information contact Robbie O’ Connor on mobile at 353-1-4042716 or email at [email protected]