top of page
SPARE ROOM:
EVE
OLNEY
+
KATE
O'SHEA
Dr Eve Olney works across multidisciplinary research practice as an independent researcher, activist, creative producer and educator. She is a member of urban activist group Urban React (Greece) and the collaborative commoning project Living Commons (Ireland). Her work is published and exhibited across, art, architectural and sociopolitical activist forums.
The concept of ArtËArchitectureËActivism as a scheme of collaborative practice and action was conceived from a particular strain of research Eve was conducting, 2014-2017, regarding the artist’s and the architect’s complicity within oppressive neoliberalist practices and ideologies. She led the first collaborative exhibition project in Athens, Greece called Inhabiting the Bageion: Architecture as critique (Culture Ireland) in 2017 and is now co-producing the second iteration called SPARE ROOM (Irish Arts Council) in Cork City, with Kate O’Shea. Eve has recently been awarded the Irish Arts Council Arts Participation Next Generation Award, 2019.
Kate O’ Shea is an artist with a social practice which includes printmaking, the production of ‘social spaces’ and publishing. Kate is currently co-producing SPARE ROOM Art Architecture Activism with Eve Olney in Cork. She recently published the book Durty Words with graphic designer Victoria Brunetta. Kate has just completed an MA by Research in Printmaking as a space for solidarity and dialogue at Limerick School of Art and Design. In 2009 Kate converted an old farmhouse and barn located outside of Kenmare, Co. Kerry into a ‘social space’, NomNom Café and Gallery. She ran this space for seven years. In its final year, NomNom Cafe culminated with NomShtock, an arts, music and wellâbeing festival that took place during the summer of 2014. Kate initiated and co-produced eight community events entitled ‘Volxkuche’ (The People’s Kitchen) at Sample Studios, Cork, between 2015 and 2017, and two community events entitled ‘The People’s Kitchen, Limerick’ after that. These events use food, conversation and performance as a platform for social solidarity. Kate regularly exhibits nationally and internationally. Most recently, she exhibited her large-scale print installation work in Bern, Switzerland.www.kateosheablog.com
MIDDLE SPACE
:
AOIFE BARRETT
GEMMA DARDIS
AIDEEN O'DONOVAN
Aoife Barrett is a visual artist and printmaker. She holds a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art Printmaking from Limerick School of Art and Design (2010) and MA in Multi-Disciplinary Printmaking from the University of the West of England (2015). She also holds a BA (Hons) Degree in Archaeology from the University College Cork (2006). Aoife’s printmaking practice centres on inclusivity, collaboration and community. Through collaborative community projects she explores issues around displacement and local connectedness while looking at ways of creating immersive, inclusive communities. Recent collaborative projects include ‘Offset’, an intergenerational printmaking project with Galway University Hospitals Arts Trust; ‘Threshold’ a collaboration with participants from St. Mungo’s homeless charity, Bristol and a school engagement project with Cossham Memorial Hospital, Bristol.
Aoife’s work has featured in numerous group shows in Ireland, the UK, Germany, Slovenia, Greece and Hong Kong.
Gemma Dardis is an interdisciplinary artist. She was co-founder and co-director of Limerick Ceramics Works studio and galley 2006-2009. She has undertaken residencies in Ireland and Europe. In 2015 she was one of two Irish artists chosen to represent Ireland as part SYMBOLS - Culture of Death & Cultural Life, in Avilies Spain. She is a member of limerick printmakers and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including Spain, Italy, France, Slovenia, U.K. China and United States. Her most recent solo show ‘Latent’ , (Chimera gallery Mullingar) was representative of her interdisciplinary practice encompassing work in ceramic, print and photography. Her work examines the relationship between the three-dimensional form and the two-dimensional image through ceramics, print, and photography. Her current research is concerned with exploring the potential of gold nanoparticles in the creation of fired photographic ceramic images. This recent aspect of her practice sees her interdisciplinary practice extending to examine the relationship between art and science.
Aideen O' Donovan is a trained architect living and working in Berlin. Having studied her BSc in Architecture at the Architecture School in Cork, CCAE she completed an MA in Architecture at the Aarhus School of Architecture in Denmark. Here she became increasingly more focused on Urban design, Landscape and the architecture of public social spaces. She’s spent the past four years working at internationally practicing Urban Landscape Architecture design firms; Schønherr, based in Denmark, Topotek 1 in Berlin and currently works as a design architect for the Danish Artist Jeppe Hein in Berlin. At Jeppe’s studio she is part of a team of architects working in the department of art in public space creating socially stimulating interactive sculptures for public spaces around the world. She is passionate about the power art has to bring people together by breaking down social barriers in the public realm.
DEE O' LEARY
Dee O’Leary is an Irish Sound Designer who holds particular interest in how stories can be told in different ways using sound as well as using sound design as a way to participate/ tell stories within various communities. She has worked with on various projects involving music in communities, human rights campaigns and sound workshops.
JOANNE POWER
Joanne Power is visual artist/designer based in Cork working primarily in the medium of sculpture and installation. Her work can be seen as ongoing research and is largely informed by spatiality, philosophy and natural science. Joanne trained as a fashion designer in NCAD & London College of Fashion and has studio experience in Ireland, Antwerp and London. Her work has been featured nationally and internationally, she has also contributed to research in the field of architecture, fashion and visual art. Joanne uses a synthesis of approaches and a wide range of media to examine how spatiality, objects and concepts can prompt spatial, civic and social interest. Her current work is an effort to connect sites and systems in order to critique and understand them. Through physical and perceptual interventions her work transgresses the interstitial spaces between physical and non physical, imagined and real, public and private.
ANNA WALSH
Anna Walsh graduated from NCAD in craft design. She has been traveling and working in the jewellery and 3D printing sector for the last 8 years. She has just moved back to Ireland and has started her MA in Art Therapy.
:
JOHN MALCOL ANDERSON
RíONACH Ní NEíLL
EVE OLNEY
John Malcolm Anderson is a technologist and activist from the west of Ireland. His field of work includes web, graphic & user interface design and more recently big data engineering, visualisation and mixed media visual arts. His activism within the corporation is through corporate social responsibility and employee resource group structures. He has recently been nominated as a delegate for the One Young World 2019 summit for his work in these areas. As well as activism through corporate structures, John is also co-managing the grassroots initiative Queer Diaspora Ireland and creative platform Mutual Collection Èire.
Dr. RÍONACH NÍ NEÍLL has over 20 years experience in performance, curation, socially-engaged arts practice and community education. Her work has no fixed borders in its focus on civic dialogue, and has involved collaborations across dance, architecture, film, geography, engineering and health. As a dance artist, she has won international choreography awards and her works have been presented worldwide. During her tenure as Galway Dance Artist in Residence, Ríonach founded Corp_Real | Galway Dance Days, an annual international platform for multi-disciplinary engagement with dance and social issues. The festival has played an important role in identifying and incubating new talent and new junctures for dance artists, as well as introducing major international dance companies to Ireland. Further curatorial work includes Dance Curator at Firkin Crane Cork, and programming for St Patricks Festival Dublin. She has extensive experience developing dance programmes for older people, in Irish, German and English, including for people living with dementia and people living with mental health issues. She founded the Macushla Dance Club for +50s in 2007, which nurtures creative exchange between older people and the professional dance community, and was founder faculty on the Geragogic (arts facilitation for older people) professional certification course at the Bundesakademie für Kulturelle Bildung, Germany. She holds a PhD in Geography from University College Dublin and has guest lectured in Germany, Sweden, Portugal, UK and numerous Irish institutions. She is the creator and artistic director of Hope it Rains | Soineann nó Doineann, a large-scale programme for Galway’s year as European Capital of Culture 2020, which addresses weather and climate resilience.
KATE O'SHEA
SHELLY ROURKE
Shelly Rourke completed her masters in architecture from CCAE where her design project created a social infrastructure for Athens to enable newly arrived migrants to collaborate in the production and development of a new organic leather material derived from the fermented beverage Kombucha. Shelly often focuses on overlooked presences, the discarded and underutilised within our urban scape to begin to maximise their potential. Shelly now practices architecture in Coady Architects in Dublin and has a keen interest in assisting marginalised members of our society that are neglected by the governing institution by empowering them to restore their sense of ownership and belonging.
https://issuu.com/michellerourke/docs/26082016thesispdf_no_cut_marks
EVGENY SHTORN
Evgeny Shtorn, MA in Sociology, is a LGBT activist, organiser and researcher from Russia. In 2018, he was forced to leave Russia and claim asylum. Currently works as Cultural Diversity Researcher at Create - National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts. Also he is co-facilitating a project 'Something From There' in the National Gallery of Ireland. His academic interests include queer theory, migration and hate crimes. He uses different forms of expression including poetry and anthropological diary to reflect social and political reality that makes people resist and never give up despite the fact that everything is designed to oppress them. His texts has been published in academic journals, new media as well as in different anthologies in Russia and in Ireland. As an activist he was involved for years with human rights and LGBT organisations. Since applying for international protection in the Republic of Ireland and living in direct provision center he started the grass-routs initiative Queer Diaspora Ireland in order to create awareness and advocate for LGBT-people in direct provision, highlighting issues of gender based violence and bullying in such a hostile system of institutionalised living. He has been talking in multiple events in Ireland on this regards, including, Fire Station Artists Studios, Science Gallery, TCD, UCD, UCC, NUI Galway among others.
FIONA WOODS
Fiona Woods works with aesthetics and critical spatial practice, often in a co-productive capacity with others. She employs social, public and institutional circuits to explore ideas of what we have 'in common'. Her ongoing work, the Laboratory of Common Interest, takes the form of a social choreography, exploring themes of alternative economies and the politics of bodies, through modes of co-production oriented towards a politics of the Commons. She recently completed an extended research residency in Ecuador, learning from the commoning practices of traditional Comunas, or living collectives. She is a member of The Living Commons project.
:
urban â react" is a collective that has emerged from the Architecture departments of the Universities of Bern and Athens, and independent researchers in Cork and includes activist artists, architects, researchers, workers and scientists. Although we come from different fields, we all share a common interest in finding alternative models of teaching, application and processes in architecture and social and cultural practices with the objective of enabling people gain control of their own living environments. Through processes of Collective Design, Activism and Practice Research our project aims to address contemporary sociopolitical issues, and through urban projects and practice research develop new critiques and pedagogical concepts that focus on architecture as a tool of social integration and social involvement. https://urbanreact.wordpress.com/
:
SEAMUS NOLAN
Seamus Nolan is an artist based in Dublin, Recent and ongoing works include, ‘Man in the Machine’ for Nieuwe Vide Artspace Amsterdam, Traveller Collection at the Hugh Lane, a CAPP commission with Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and Create. ‘The Autonomy project’, in the Sailors home Limerick, ‘10th president’ a campaign for the nomination of William Delaney 1957 -1970 as a candidate for the 2018 Irish presidential elections,‘4th Space’ for Inhabiting the Bageion, Athens,”Proto punks’ with Upstate Theatre projects Drogheda, and ”F**K IMMA’ for ‘What we call love’ in the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
:
FRANCESCA SASTELLANO
Francesca is a Performance and a Multimedia Artist from Rome, Italy, where she graduated with a Diploma in Science. In 1995 she immigrated to Ireland and moved to Cork. While attending the 3rd year of Crawford College of Art, she become a mum and run away with the Circus, where she worked as a performer, an aerialist and a teacher for the last 15 years, developing ensemble performances, cabaret and parades with various communities and her own individual performances for Art Festivals in Ireland and abroad. In 2016 she returned to Crawford College to complete her Bacholor's Degree in Fine Arts and following she earned her Master in Art and Process in 2018. In recent years Francesca has connected her Performance Art with her activist work as a dissident, an anarchist and a femminist. She combines her passion for embodied experiences with the struggle to find meaningful connections that can instigate autonomous identities within our coded behaviours.
COLM WALSH
Colm Walsh is a freelance film-maker who has been working with musicians, artists and other film-makers in Cork for the last 10 years. His work consists of the capturing of live performances and documentary of artistic processes as well as short film and experimental film work. Since 2014, he has led several film-making workshops in the context of mental health and the arts.
:
alphabeticaly
TOURIA BESBAS
EVELYN BRODERICK
VICTORIA BRUNETTA
Originally from Morocco, during most of her three years in Athens, Touria has been working in the food industry. She started by making tapas for her local church group, where her talents were recognised and soon thereafter she began her one year collaboration with Options FoodLab, where she perfected some of her signature Moroccan dishes, thus bringing them to a wider audience though a variety of events that took place throughout Athens. Later, her skills earned her a place cooking in the Refugee Food Festival, where her cooking was brought to the attention to the media. Now, after beginning her impressive career in the food and hospitality industry, she is ready to start her own business in Athens, which will offer the public at large the opportunity to taste her healthy, tasy and economical food with more regular frequency.Menu :Touria’s concept is to have traditional Moroccan dishes served quickly in a central location with a well trained staff of her choosing to bring her unique flavours to life on a daily basis. Her planned menu will have warm starters, cold starters, meze, a variety of couscous and tagine dishes, and daily special with a fixed price lunch menu.Values:Touria’s path to integration was no easy task and she is thankful for all the help she has received along the way, therefore she would like to continue to help others find stability in a constantly changing environment. She plans to do by working closely with to apprenticeship program for other refugees to learn from her experience and perfect their skills in the F&B industry. Under her guidance, the trainees will learn to prepare food in a restaurant setting where every dish must be to the same level of quality, furthermore Touria will help them to perfect their own dishes, with the aim of eventually having some fusion dishes on the menu, like “bisara” which will show, with edible results, her commitment to improving the local community through her work.
Evelyn Broderick is an installation artist, she is currently a studio member at A4 Sounds in Dublin. Broderick uses socially engaged structures to shackle and bind drawing, printmaking and sculpture together.
Victoria Brunetta is an Argentinian graphic designer currently based in Limerick, Ireland. Her work focuses on human rights, culture and social change. Victoria works at Piquant Media, a design company from Limerick. She designed and co-produced the book Durty Words with artist Kate O Shea in 2018. This book invited 134 people from all over the world to respond to the relevance of anarchist thought today. This is the first book of the Durty Books Publishing House. With a background in Literature studies, Design and Typography, Victoria always wanted to publish books. Victoria has just designed the first single-author book of the publishing house, a book on Direct Democracy by Yavor Tarinksi. This book will be launched at Spare Room. Victoria is currently working with MASI (Movement of Asylum Seekers Ireland) to produce their first journal.
SIOBHáN CLANCY
MARY COOKE
Siobhán Clancy is a visual artist concerned with social health. Her practice is located in institutional, civic and cultural spaces. She often collaborates with other artists, activists, youth, community and wom*n’s groups. The outcomes typically materialise as multi-media works, immersive events, participatory performances, dialogues, play and live action in contexts of health, education and justice. Following graduation from NCAD with a BA Hons in Fine Art in 2005, in 2014 Siobhán completed a Masters in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism at Maynooth University. She is currently completing a module in Arts and Health at Masters Level with Aesop Institute and Christchurch University Canterbury, UK. Her work on agency, abortion and feminist activism in Ireland has received support from the A4 Sounds Studio, The Arts Council of Ireland and Create. She has collaborated with Northern Irish art activist Emma Campbell on work exhibited in Belfast, Dublin, London and Stockholm. Siobhán has newly relocated to Cork as Creative Associate at the Helium Arts Creative Health Hub where she works with young outpatients at CUH. Siobhán also continues to provide creative consultation and facilitation for cultural organisations such as Make Create Innovate, a S.T.E.A.M. Education startup.
Materials are the cornerstone of my process based sculptures. My art explores researches and speaks of home and the complex universal issues of the female body, creativity, and feminine identity. My practice moves freely between object, installations, poetry, sound, video and drawings, and is time intensive. My work unfolds over time, allowing the materials to talk in an emotive way. The work evolves through handing the materials. My art is primarily expressionistic, enciphers memories and emotions, that follows an intuitive process My art and my work practice is a daily undertaking of constant curiosity, in which I push forward my ideas, questioning my own conditioning and my own personal integrity.
CORK TRAVELLER WOMEN’S NETWORK
The Cork Traveller Women’s Network are a community development organisation, run by Traveller women and working for Traveller rights in the city. Our work involves supporting Traveller women as leaders, promoting Traveller health, advocating for Traveller accommodation and the promotion of Traveller culture and ethnicity. We support a network of Traveller women’s groups throughout the city as well as the Meelagh Traveller Community Centre. As part of our work to promote Traveller pride and awareness of the many positive contributions that Travellers to Irish society, the network was responsible for the “Barrel Top” Project that created a full sized traditional barreltop wagon during Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. The Barrel top is now the centrepiece in “Toraig on the Tobar”, the Traveller Culture Exhibit at Cork Public Museum in Fitzgerald’s Park. Contact us at corktravellerwomen@hotmail.com or 086 7777651/ 086 3850136
RACHEL DOOLIN
KEVIN FLANAGAN
CASSIA GADEN GILMARTN
Rachel Doolin b.1981 is an emerging visual artist residing in the South-West of Ireland. Doolin’s multifaceted practice marries art, experimentation and ecology to explore themes concerning materiality, habitation and the environment. Employing a methodology of making that the artist describes as ‘simple complexity’, Doolin gathers, manipulates and combines various media to actualize her often poetic provocations. Her sculptural and installation based works are simultaneously delicate and complex aggregations that pertain to the vulnerability and persistence, fragility and tenacity of biological life in the Anthropocene.
Kevin Flanagan is a PhD researcher with the Department of Anthropology at Maynooth University. His current research is on the city as a commons a study of social movements and alternatives to capitalism in the city of Barcelona with a focus on Commons, Cooperatives and Solidarity Economy. Kevin is a member of An Áit Eile (The Other Place) in Galway. An Áit Eile (AAE) started as an association of cultural workers organising events and projects engaged with social and ecological issues as well as mental health. In 2019 AAE became one of Ireland’s first multi-stakeholder cooperatives. The coop provides a range of administrative services for social and cultural projects focused on social and ecological impact. Kevin will present some reflections from his research and host a conversation on tools for self-organising networks for community empowerment and democratising the economy.
Cassia Gaden Gilmartin is a fiction writer and a journalist writing for GCN (Gay Community News). She recently completed her MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College, Dublin. Her short fiction has been published by Banshee, Transnational Queer Underground and Eunoia Review.
EMMA GRADIN
Emma Gradin is an independent curator and PhD student at Chelsea College of Arts in London, originally from Stockholm. Her research is on slowing down the experiencing of art in galleries, and slowing down curatorial work in general.
MOHAMED HACHIMI
SHANE HORAN
When living in Morocco Mohamed accumulated a multitude of skills and practices within carpentry and the building and steel industries. Now permanently based in Athens his practice has extended into self-build, self-organised community social projects. This work is based within community practices of creating ecological and sustainable social and material infrastructures. Mohamed was a key participant in the first Art Architecture Activism project held in Athens in October, 2017. He has also produced work across numerous European cities.
Shane Horan is a Limerick-born photographer based in Cork city. Beginning his career as a music photographer four years ago in an attempt to capture the local music scene that was flourishing around him. He is quickly becoming a key member of the Cork Music community and can often be found photographing gigs and performances around Cork, as well as shooting his own freelance material. In his photos, Shane makes an effort to capture the energy and emotion of an artist, with a particular emphasis on encapsulating the atmosphere they create in settings up and down the country. Shane has photographed Hozier, Liam Gallagher and David Grey, to name but a few, with his images appearing in a variety of local, national and online publications.
ROB IRESON
Rob Ireson is a sculptor who works in and with public space. He creates situation’s for connection with self, nature and each other. This work has taken the form of interactive sculpture, sound art, inflatable spaces and conversational pieces such as CommuniGate; a nomadic border. He aims to create opportunities to challenge, discuss and transform. To view his sculpture work go to www.robireson.carbonmade.com and www.thisboxis.wordpress.com for his interventionist practice.
DARREN KIRWAN
TOMASZ MADAJCZAK
Darren Kirwan is an artist and cook based in Cork.
Tomasz Madajczak was born in 1979 in Gorzów Wielkopolski in Poland. Studied Photography at the Fine Arts Academy in PoznaĆ 1998-2003. Finalized his studies in 2003 with an MA in the Intermedia Department in the workshop run by prof. Andrzej Syska. Tomasz has emigrated to Ireland shortly afterward, where he has been residing and creating ever since. He has exhibited in Poland, Germany, Netherlands, France and Ireland.
MASI
Dr. CONOR McCABE
ELIZABETH MURTOUGH
MASI seeks justice, freedom and dignity for all asylum seekers. MASI is a platform for asylum seekers to join together in unity and purpose. MASI came together after the protests in the Direct Provision centres in 2014. We believe that speaking together in one voice, moving together in one direction, we are much stronger, our voices much louder and more difficult to ignore and dismiss. For us, MASI is a way to take back our power and demand freedom, justice and dignity for all asylum seekers. MASI demands an end to direct provision, the right to work and education, residency for all in the system, and an end to the brutal deportation regime. www.masi.ie
Dr. Conor McCabe is an activist and economist whose recently published book, Money (2018), addresses the opaque and abstract form of money as a social relation and as a technology of power. It also puts forward alternatives that involve facing up to deep economic class divisions within Irish society.
Elizabeth Murtough is a poet and recent graduate of the M Phil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin. Her poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. She is the co-founder and editor of Channel, an Irish environmental magazine of poetry, prose and criticism.
ESZTER NéMETHIi
DOBZ O’ BRIEN
Eszter Némethi (1987, Budapest) is a theatre maker, curator and researcher. She is interested in the space between people, contexts and ideas and creating structures (practical, dramaturgical and spatial) that can be inhabited by others. Coming from a background in documentary theatre, over the last years she has been developing a site-responsive practice of reading 'border metaphors' and the liminal spaces of border zones in collective ways, trying to both highlight and queer the narratives constructing them. This often combines play, pedagogy and reading as methodologies, inviting the audience to activate and inhabit the work. She is interested to explore the relation of public spaces and border zones in the way in which they are sites of the emergence of narratives of communities regarding themselves. She holds an MA in Social Practice and the Creative Environment (LSAD) and she is a recent graduate of the a.pass (advanced performance and scenography studies) post-master research programme in Brussels. From '15-'19 she was the curator of Quarter Block Party's Public Art strand. In recent years her work was presented at Kanal-Centre Pompidou (BE), De Markten, Cork Midsummer Festival, Dublin Fringe Festival, Galway Arts Centre, Pallas Project/Studios, North Main Street, different Irish Paediatric wards and strange fields in Brussels.
Dobz O’Brien is an artist, independent curator and the Programmes Manager at the National Sculpture Factory, Cork.Over the last 10 years at the National Sculpture Factory he has designed, conceived, produced and curated a broad series of projects and across a wide variety of mediums, sites and locations. He was a co-curator of the Cork Caucus project in 2005 with Charles Esche, Annie Fletcher and Fergal Gaynor. Major projects were undertaken by International artists Surasi Kusolwong (Thailand), BikvanderPol (Holland), Maria Eichhorn (Berlin), Paul O’Neill, Static, Phil Collins. While theoretical lectures and workshops were given by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Chantal Mouffe, Sarat Maharaj and Catherine David amongst many others.
MAGGIE O'SULILIVAN
Maggie O’Sullivan has a broad experience in the areas of communication, both in the design and the digital sector. She is an avid supporter and volunteer of many community projects and truly believes that exhibitions like Art, Architecture, Activism can influence and encourage people to make a difference and build a great since of community. She is passionate about the orchestration of events and uses own her skills in design, management, and administration to achieve this in her work life and hopes to do the same for this project.
TOMAS PENC
AOIFE SCANLON
DECLAN SYNNOT
Tomas Penc has a Cork based independent art practice revolving around new technologies and holds a Fine Art Degree from the Cork Institute of Technology, a Diploma in TV, Radio and Film Production and an extensive employment record in information technology. He has been working as the Programmes Assistant at the National Sculpture Factory since 2016 and has contributed with his skills in film editing, photography and web design.tomaspenc.art
(not in order of importance) Teacher, Yoga Practitioner, Irish, Feminist, Socialist, Anarchist, Runner, Web Developer, Festival Organizer, Small Business Owner, Architect, Writer, Artist.
Declan Synnott is a musician and writer based in Cork. Heavily invested in DIY music cultures, his research and writing has investigated the political underpinnings of punk and experimental music practices and cultures. His musical output generally works with dense layering and abstraction. His writing focuses on Anarchist and Anti-Capitalist action, Post-Structuralism and non-traditional cultural practices.
YAVOR TARINSKI
Yavor Tarinski is an independent researcher and a militant in social movements. Born in 1988 in the city of Sofia, Bulgaria, he currently resides in Athens, Greece. Tarinski participates in the Greek political journal Babylonia.gr, he is the bibliographer at the international platform AgoraInternational.org and a member of the advisory council of TRISE. In the past he co-founded social center "Adelante" — the first free social space in Bulgaria — as well as the Bulgarian Social Forum. Tarinski writes for various international websites and is author of books and brochures on direct democracy and the commons.
SPYROS TSIKNAS
VICKY DONNELLY
Spyros Tsiknas is an Electrical Electronic Engineer and a Theater practitioner. His field of interest is Art & Sustainability in which art meets science in a transdisciplinary way. Currently he is working in Renewable Energy Sources and also he writes, performs and directs a theatrical participatory children's event which aims to raise awareness for environmental issues. He continues his research with Environmental - Social activists in order to investigate ways of Non Violet Actions. He is a member of a Social Collaborative Entrepreneurship that aims to Empower local communities.
Vicky is an education worker with Galway One World Centre,designing and delivering workshops on local and global justice issues like refugee rights, anti-racism education, and debt, trade and tax justice in schools, and universities. As a member of the Anglo: Not Our Debt network, she spent years protesting and campaigning for a just solution to the debt crisis in Ireland, and beyond, and is now involved in the Citizens For Financial Justice, a diverse group of European partners – from local grassroots groups to large international organisations – with a shared vision of informing and connecting citizens to act together to demand a global finance system that works in the interests of people and planet.
Dr.MARILYN LENNON
COLETTE LEWIS
ELINOR RIVERS
Marilyn is an artist and lecturer. In 2009 she setup the SpiritStore Art Café, a social space in the derelict Sarsfield Bar, housed in Limerick’s oldest Georgian building on the corner site of a stalled commercial development in Limerick city centre. The SpiritStore art project ran for four years in various forms and locations taking diverse social art approaches to conveying or contesting experiences of inhabiting the city. More recently she has completed a long-term collaboration with the Knockatallon Ramblers, a hiking club in north Co. Monaghan. The project investigated the intimate act of walking at the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland to address spatial contestation and to offer alternative narratives of place from those who live it every day. Her PhD, at the Interaction Design Centre (IDC), an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Limerick explored methodologies derived from Art and Design practice which support and facilitate participants in Participatory Design, Co-Design and Collaborative design. She is Joint Programme Leader of MA Social Practice and the Creative Environment, (MA SPACE) Limerick School of Art and Design. Marilyn is a member of the Cork Artist Collective and the IoD (Institute of Dwelling) with Collette Lewis and Elinor Rivers.
Colette Lewis is artist and educator based in Cork. She works primarily through a social art model of practice, researching forms of embodied knowledge and place through collaborative engagement. She completed an MA in Visual Art Practices in IADT and holds a Diploma in Field Ecology from University College Cork. She is a member of the artist group The IoD (Institute of Dwelling) with Marilyn Lennon and Elinor Rivers. Colette has undertaken numerous art projects in social, healthcare and rural settings. She has recently been commissioned by the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh to undertake the Creative Enquiry - Arts and Older People Artist Residency. Her residency focuses on researching latent forms of local knowledge and skill that hold significant social and economic histories and an enduring relevance for current public discourse around sustainable living strategies. For many years Colette has been involved in the running and programming of artist-led spaces in Cork. She is a Board of Directors member of the Cork Artists Collective and a founding member of The Guesthouse Project.
Elinor Rivers has a BA in Fine Art from CCAD. She has trained in performative practices over many years through Dance, Movement practices, Clown and Improv. Elinor has created, curated and managed numerous public events and interventions including Buíochas 2002, Ideal State Agency residency in Slovakia and resulting Event at Club One Cork 2004, Cork Mandala of Community Gardens (A 2005 Cork Capital of Culture Project) 2004-2006 which included multiple events, workshops, and festival events, Mayfield Art Centre participatory landscaping project 2007- 2008. Her socially engaged practice has included Real Voices BAI funded radio project with St Raphaels Centre Youghal 2012, SMILE Inclusive Performance Arts Festival annually 2013-2015 hosted by St. Raphaels Centre. Elinor has also worked as an activist for over 20 years predominantly in the areas of community development and the environment. She has often combined her artistic practice and her activism.
bottom of page