Collaborative Learning in the Neighbourhood Reflections on NCAD’s Dublin 8 Neighbourhood Residency
Since its inception in 2020, NCAD’s Dublin 8 Neighbourhood Residency programme offers Undergraduate Fine Art students an in-depth learning experience of the richness of community-based collaborative arts practice. Immersed in the local neighbourhood of the college and hosted by a network of community organisations including Rialto Youth Project, The Bridge Project and Robert Emmet CDP, as well as Create, the residency supports students to develop their ideas and practices in context and in partnership with others.
This event brings together NCAD students and staff, along with local community workers, youth workers, artists and educators to critically reflect upon shared experiences and consider the challenges and potential of collaborative arts practice in the neighbourhood.
This event will feature inputs from NCAD students Patsy Tyrell, Aaron Sunderland Carey and Steph Saidha; Martin Drury, Independent Practitioner and Adviser; Dannielle Mc Kenna, Project Manager of Rialto Youth Project; Sheena Barrett, Curator of the LAB Gallery and Assistant Arts Officer Dublin City Council; Austin Campbell, Executive Director of Robert Emmet Community Development Project; Fiona Whelan, Coordinator of D8 Neighbourhood Residency, NCAD; and Ailbhe Murphy, Director of Create.
Fiona Whelan, Martin Drury, Dannielle Mc Kenna, Sheena Barrett, Austin Campbell, Ailbhe Murphy, Patsy Tyrrell, Aaron Sunderland Carey and Steph Saidha
10.30AM NCAD Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre. Booking required.
Speakers
Fiona Whelan is a Dublin-based artist, writer and lecturer at NCAD where she coordinates the Dublin 8 Neighbourhood Residency. Her arts practice is committed to exploring and responding to systemic power relations and inequalities, through long-term collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations.
Martin Drury is currently writing a history of the relationship between the State, the arts and young people. Over a forty year career encompassing practice, project-management and policy-making, his roles have included: Director of TEAM TIE company; founding Director of The Ark; Director of Strategic Development, at the Arts Council; and freelance theatre director of 20+ productions.
Dannielle Mc Kenna is the Project Manager of Rialto Youth Project, which is a community based youth project based in the heart of Rialto, Dublin 8. The mission of the youth project is to respond to the needs of young people who are most at risk due to inequality.
Sheena Barrett is an Assistant Arts Officer with Dublin City Council and Curator of the LAB Gallery, a critical platform for emerging arts practice in Ireland.
Austin Campbell is the Executive Director of Robert Emmet Community Development Project, an organisation based in South West Inner City Dublin that provides a wide array of programmes to best serve local community members. Austin believes providing people with means to genuinely participate in deliberative processes related to them is the most sustainable way to build fairer, safer and more enjoyable communities and feels very lucky that he gets to do what he loves every day.
Ailbhe Murphy is an artist and Director of Create, where she is responsible for core programming and strategic and organisational development and partnerships, nationally and internationally. She holds a BA in Fine Art from the National College of Art and Design and she was awarded her doctorate from the University of Ulster in 2011.
Patsy Tyrrell is a student of Fine Art, Sculpture and Expanded Practice at NCAD. Her work is tethered in the point of contact between her embodied experience and the surrounding landscape. Her socially engaged art practice continues along this thread. She works with young women exploring their embodied experiences in public spaces specifically in relation to gender based violence.
Aaron Sunderland Carey is a Fine Art Media student at NCAD. As an artist, he is interested in class, identity, masculinity and young men’s lived experiences. The roots of his practice are in the working class reality of Dublin.
Steph Saidha is a Fine Art Media student at NCAD. Her current project Letters To The Bond (a collaboration with Robert Emmet CDP), captures children’s insights into the Oliver Bond flat complex in advance of major regeneration. By documenting details large and small through photography and personal letters, this project highlights a powerful and intimate relationship between the children and their local area.
Photo by Killian Jones, from Letters to the Bond project by NCAD student Steph Saidha and Robert Emmet CDP.