Sinéad Burke proves breaking the mould is all the fashion

Ciara McDonnell talks to fashionista and activist Sinéad Burke about how she's changing the way the world thinks

Mon, 19 Oct, 2020 - 07:20

Ciara McDonnell

Advocate, activist, teacher, fashionista and friend to the great and the good. Sinéad Burke can add best-selling author to that list of accolades, because even before her new children’s book Break The Mould: How To Take Your Place In The World, launched on Thursday, pre-order sales had declared it a best-seller.

Born 30 years ago with achondroplasia, (a disproportionate form of restricted growth), Sinead Burke has made it her life’s mission to change the way the world thinks. From the White House to the Met Gala, she uses her profile and universally admired sense of style to encourage us all to be more tolerant of others.

In-person (well, Zoom-in-person), Sinéad is thoughtful and softly spoken. “I'm an extroverted introvert so I'm at my most comfortable being quiet,” she says. “My friends say that the more you get to know me the quieter I am, which is a complete contradiction to people who don't know me but may know of me.”

This year has been one of great internal change for the activist, which saw her return to her family home in March.

“I think in many ways the book was this amazing vehicle that transformed everything because I came home the first week in March and I had a whole host of projects that had been cancelled and I was like 'what am I going to do with my time'.

It sounds ridiculous to say, but time is not a currency that I often had, I was so busy moving from one objective to the next that the idea that you could sit within the quiet was something that I was probably deeply uncomfortable with.

In the quiet, Sinéad found a new routine and a new way of living. She walks 5km every morning with the same friend, unburdening on each other as they pound the pavements. She has found the opportunity to be vulnerable, and to show the soft underbelly of her feelings to her friends and family. “I think in many ways I have often been the receptacle that other people confide in."

Burke says she realised it was time to be brave, to say: "'Listen I'm struggling' or 'I'm having a great time' or 'My book is coming out this week and I'm entirely overwhelmed because it could be terrible."

Break The Mould was conceived, written and edited without any of the team involved ever meeting in person. In some ways, says Burke, it was a blessing. “I was submitting this manuscript that had a whole chunk of my life and my lived experience and trying to make that something useful, like a toolkit, that can engage children and help to make them believe in themselves, which is such an arduous thing to try to achieve.”

As a teacher, Sinéad had myriad experiences to draw on when writing the book, which is filled with important life lessons of empathy and understanding, gently nudging the reader towards the idea that we are all different but if the world missed out on one of us, it would be a lesser place to exist in.

The book, she says, is about honing in on the children who might need it. “It’s about appealing to the child and saying 'you're valid. You are enough as you are. You exist. These material things don't matter about you as a person. You are part of this world too'."

It’s no coincidence that Sinéad can speak so authoritatively on the subject of feeling this way. Her life experience has given her a deep understanding of what it’s like to live on the fringes. “I don't know what it's like to not be the centre of attention, so I have no idea what it's like to be able to be in your shoes in the sense of, to be able to walk around seamlessly and kind of camouflage yourself within society.”

Sinead Burke with President and Sabina Higgins at a reception to mark International Women's Day 2020

Being the centre of attention, without your consent, must be an exhausting endeavour, I wonder. Does she feel the weight of how influential she has become and the bullying and unwanted attention she has endured during her lifetime, to be unbearable at times? She is pragmatic about it. “We wouldn't be having this conversation if I wasn't different. It is the fact I have been the centre of attention and been so visibly different that has shaped everything I have done since.”

As she turns, full-force towards her new decade, Sinéad Burke has new aspirations on the horizon. “This day last year I was in Australia and I was going to New Zealand and it was this frantic pace that was kind of rooted in work and really I think, beginning to go into this decade, what does work look like, going forward. It's not environmentally sustainable, nor is it personally sustainable to be doing that amount of travel, so what could it look like? How can I instigate change and be a facilitator for different kinds of conversations and new ways of doing things?”

Whether connecting with the leaders of the world or encouraging an eight-year-old to breakout of their mould, Sinéad Burke says that human connection is what it’s all about. “I'm so lucky that people might come up and say, 'Hi, you're Sinéad' every so often, and what a treat. What a treat that someone wants to have a conversation with you because something you said connected with them.”