BBCMore than 100 wedding dresses, transformed into ball gowns and evening dresses by volunteers, are now on display.
Curated by former Mayor of Wells, Tanys Pullin, the project aims to promote wellbeing and help people navigate life events together.
“It’s about people not being alone. We are very inclusive, everyone is important and everyone can contribute,” she said.
The Jailhouse Frock exhibition is currently showing 116 upcycled dresses at Shepton Mallet Prison in Somerset.
Ms Pullin said she started the project to raise money for charity after being inspired by Kirsty’s red dressis now “completely addicted” to clothes.
More than 1,000 volunteers aged 13 to 80 have come together to participate in the project.
“Every dress has its own storyboard, there is a real sense of community.
“I think this could be seen in other communities that could work together in a very positive way,” Ms Pullin said.
Lisa Holman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022. She painted her white dress pink and decorated it with flowers.
It has a black flower that symbolizes her cancer.
The other flowers symbolize friends, she said, including those who “didn’t know how to react or handle it, so they just fell over. So those are the flowers that are now going down.”
“It was really a therapeutic and quite cathartic experience,” she added.
Ms Holman said it was “surreal” to see the dress as part of the exhibition.
Another volunteer, Marjorie Wells, is a seamstress who is also known as a “transformer.”
For the project, she upcycled two dresses, one of which is based on Barbie dresses, as she and her daughter each own around 200 dolls.
The other dress is inspired by climate change and the effect of the sun.
In addition to those who volunteered to redesign the dresses, there were also others who sacrificed their time to demonstrate them.
Lotty Merry decided to walk the catwalk in a wedding dress on Saturday in memory of her late husband.
He was diagnosed with cancer 22 years ago and was given twelve months to live; he died five months later.
This meant that Mrs Merry could not walk down the aisle in her wedding dress.
“I wore it in the hospital and we had two hours. I wanted to leave the hospital in my wedding dress,” said the riding therapist.
She added that her husband was “cheering us on from the side.”
The exhibition runs until the end of September.
