Photo by William Croall Photography
In my work as an educator/mediator I focus on facilitating participant centered, relevant and enjoyable experiences. My aim is to promote an increased understanding of creative practice with a focus on visual literacy and tacit knowledge. I have delivered workshops for various ages and abilities. I strongly believe everyone is creative.
Creative practices provide a wealth of experiences which can build resilient communities, nurture our minds, enable transformative actions and push boundaries. They can be both an important escape from reality and a means to confront, and process it.
Design Circle 2022 - an opportunity for designers to work with post-primary teachers to share their knowledge of design processes to apply in their working practices.
Designed and developed 'Object of Interest' workshop for the Junior Cycle for Teachers. This workshop was aimed at second level teachers exploring the power of objects as a starting point for visual investigation.
CRAFTed is the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland's nationwide primary schools programme run in partnership with the Assoication of Teacher Education Centers of Ireland. CRAFTed is process based and aims to provide skills for life to students, craftspoeple and teachers through collaborative and joyful engagement with craft and design. My role as Education Manager was to oversee the programme, supporting research, development and evaluation.
Talk4 was about breaking down barriers, creating dialogue about research and connecting it with the city. An informal conversation between researchers and the public, Talk4 shared academic research with new audiences.
Talk4 was supported by the University of Limerick, a partnership between Arts Humanities & Social Sciences and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. It was generously hosted by Narrative4.
The Loan Box project built on the 2014 programme designed by Dr. Dominique Bouchard. The aim of the project was to harness the learning from the first phase of the project and translate it into tangible community resources. These took the form of two loan boxes one for the Southside and one for the Northside of the city. Artist Siobhan Clancy worked with eight groups to produce objects, games and digital media to be included in the boxes. With the assistance of Mary Immaculate College two draft teaching resources were produced and are due to be piloted in the 2017 phase of Communities of Culture.
World Within Walls Exhibition: May 2015 - Febuary 2016, Monaghan County Museum. For generations the buildings which make up St Davnet’s have been a silent witness to the changing history of county Monaghan. Thousands of people have passed through its halls, some spending the majority of life there either as service users or staff. Yet for the majority of the population of Monaghan and indeed Cavan, St Davnet’s own story has remained largely untold. This pioneering exhibition presented a poignant and challenging display of the history of an institution’s evolution from a district lunatic asylum to a community service.
The exhibition was launched on Thursday, May 14th by Minister for Arts, Heritage & the Gaeltacht Heather Humphreys, TD.
Writer and content generator for Homo Faber Guide; an online platform dedicated to craftsmanship that allows you to discover artisans and their masterpieces; explore museums, visit galleries and shops selling unique objects; enjoy experiences in cities across Europe.
Future Makers 2018/19;
Future Makers is a Design & Crafts Council of Ireland initiative which recognises talent, potential and creativity. Its aim is to support the next generation of makers, designs and craftspeople to take the step from training into enterprise.
As Education Manager I developed and delivered the programme during my time a DCCoI.
Thinking about Design was created for seconded teachers working with the Junior Cycle for Teachers. This workshop explored how artists, designers and craftspeople have shaped spaces for different reasons and challenged participants to consider how they could use these methods and techniques in their own practice as teachers and facilitators to create spaces that connect people and ideas.
The workshop was kindly hosted by Limerick City Gallery of Art during the exhibition 'Maud Cotter, a consequence of - without stilling'
‘Big Ideas Bootcamp’ brought together expertise and experience in order to generate new ideas on how those working in community engagement can push their professional practices to be more authentic and collaborative. ‘Big Ideas Bootcamp’ offered a broad spectrum of activities such as action-oriented workshops, exercises designed to challenge participants and a special Night at the Museum which included the launch of the Communities of Culture 2015/16 Report and a fire-side chats event for informal networking.
HOME was a series of workshops exploring the values of home. Thirteen Traveller women from Limerick City, collaborated with artist Róisín de Búitleár, the Traveller Health Advocacy group and the Hunt Museum. The project was funded by the Limerick City and Council.
The participating women, drawn from three local Traveller communities took part in a six-week glass workshop at the museum. Using the fragile material of glass to express their ideas of home, the project explored themes of family, faith and current life on Traveller sites in Limerick city. This project gave these women a platform, in the form of an exhibition at the museum, where their voices could be heard.
Created content for Get Ireland Making; a series of online workshops and activities hosted by Design & Crafts Council Ireland (DCCI). Involving Ireland's designers, makers and the public, this programme is supported by Creative Ireland and Healthy Ireland.
The DesignSKILLS programme was a partnership between the Design & Crafts Council of Ireland and Junior Cycle for Teachers. DesignSKILLS aimed to develop teaching and learning in relation to the design process in post-primary schools in Ireland. It focused on the very beginning of this process and emphasises ideation, problem solving, divergent thinking, risk taking and experimentation.
Narrative4 Loss aimed to enable people to articulate their stories about experience of loss. Talking about loss is difficult, but not facing up to loss as an important part of life only makes it harder for everyone.
My role was to run an arts based component of the project, exploring themes of loss through visual representation. Two groups of teenagers and adult participated in art making sessions where they explored their experiences of loss through making
The 'In Fairness' project worked with eight groups all exploring the same question: what would make our communities fairer? Their ideas formed the basis for three weeks of events at the museum. These events focus on priorities identified by the groups and included conversation, debate, skills-sharing, capacity-building, and networking across a variety of topics from direct provision to the healthcare system to relationships between the community and the Gardaí.
Communities of Culture is a Hunt Museum programme exploring the different unique cultural experiences and heritages of each of Limerick’s regeneration areas.
The World Within Walls collection at the Irish Qualitative Data Archive. Digital collection which relates to the histories of the St. Davnet’s Campus, a former psychiatric hospital in Monaghan town. Contains oral histories, photographs and documents. It is part of a wider public history project commissioned and funded by the Health Service Executive (HSE) and delivered by Stair: An Irish Public History company. The aim of the World Within Walls project is to remember St. Davnet's history and its evolution from District Asylum in 1869, to psychiatric hospital and now to its present role as a modern community mental health services campus.