Seamless learning from the musical tailor

Joe McNamee meets an exceptional man whose use of technology and music is transforming exceptional people’s lives

THE tailor’s studio up several dark flights of narrow stairs in an old five-storey redbrick in the heart of Cork city, a ceiling so low, anyone over six foot instinctively ducks.

One third of the room is taken up with racks of clothing awaiting alteration or collection, the rest is cluttered with tables, benches, chairs, sewing machines, steam presses. Scissors, measuring tapes, needles, thread, blades, pins, tailor’s chalk are heaped in various little piles on worktops, always to hand.