Friday, March 20, 2009

Niamh Moriarty- Pet Appreciation

Niamh is working with the idea of pets as central to a community. They can be used as mediums to talk to ourselves and to others. Niamh is currently volunteering at the Dog's Aid animal shelter in Finglas and walking the dogs at Ashton pound. She is also working with the community in and around the Liberties area where her college (NCAD) is based, trying to connect people to create a sub-culture of pet owners. (works in progress can be seen above.)

Thursday, March 19, 2009

The Road to Recovery- Aine Kavanagh and Jamie Crosbie

Aine Kavanagh and Jamie Crosbie are working with young men with drug addiction problems who participate in Coolmine Welcome Programme, which is situated in John's Lane West. Over the last six weeks we have been exploring identity and how it can be represented using locations and cartography. Through various activities, with media including creative writing, photography, model making and board game designing, we have investigated different ways of "mapping" identity and equating it with a locational aspect.

One of the outcomes of the programme was a board game that the group designed, which is based on the progression from a life of addiction to a life of normality. The game is situated on a map of dublin, and each space on the ‘board’ holds meaning for the group, be it negative or positive. The game has resolved itself not in a literal sense, but in several ways, including a representation on google maps and an installation piece.






This map is based on a board game designed by Coolmine Welcome Programme in 2009 while collaborating with Create. The red markers on the map represent spaces on the board game. The blue ones, a creative writing exercise, making up fictional histories for some of the Streets. The Green markers represent places of interest.


View The Road to Recovery in a larger map

Niamh Moriarty - The Liberties Free Pet Appreciation Services



Friday, March 6, 2009

Peggy Shaw comes to Dublin

Peggy Shaw in an independent artist, writer and producer. Peggy was invited by Create to come to Dublin in late February to work with the placement students on the Learning Development Placement Programme 2009. She co-founded The Split Britches Theater Company with Lois Weaver and The WOW Cafe in New York City. She has received three OBIE Awards for her work with Split Britches - for performances in Dress Suits To Hire, Belle Reprieve and Menopausal Gentleman. Split Britches are a part of Staging Human Rights, where they work in prisons in Rio De Janeiro and England. They are associate artists on the Clod Ensembles Performing Medicine project-creating workshops on gender and difference for medical students and health professionals. As part of this project Peggy has made a new piece, in collaboration with The Clod Ensemble, Must; poetically examining the inside of her aging queer body, which she is performing and touring in lecture and anatomy theaters throughout Spring 2009. Peggy has been a collaborator, writer and performer with Spiderwoman Theater and Hot Peaches Theater. Peggy won the New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Emerging Forms in 1988, 1995 and 1999, and 2005; she also won the 1995 Anderson Foundation Stonewall Award for "excellence in making the world a better place for gays and lesbians" and a 2003 Otto Rene Castillo Award for Political Theatre.