Wednesday 6th November

 20:00 - Evening Performance - Emilie Conway jazz trio at the Dock

Thursday 7th November

Tobi Balogun is a Multidisciplinary Artist, working across Dance, Theatre, Voice and Design. His work focuses on cultural sustainability and the exploration of Black masculinity. In 2020 he received an Artist in the Community Scheme Bursary: Collaborative Arts and Human Rights, to develop phase one of BLACK CANVAS - an research project examining the experiences of Black-Irish creatives and communities.  Work emerging from this included curatorial residencies in Dance Ireland (MoveMEANT 2022/23), LIBERTY VIBES - an event supported by DCC Local Live Performance, NATIVES (Culture Night 2022), and Eascair (Dance Ireland 2024). His work has received support through the Arts Council and residencies at Dance Ireland (2020-2024), Photo Ireland (2023), Project Arts Centre (2023) and Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris 2024). 

Tara Carroll is a multidisciplinary artist whose social practice rests upon the perception of the body, impacted by socio-political narratives; and its placement in individualistic society. During difficult times of embodied conflictions, their community supports them in creating new pathways of care. The work Tara creates is to return this gift. Carroll has developed numerous projects including Art as Pilgrimage a durational socially engaged art project exploring histories of pilgrimage and its current role in society with older women and (Dis)Comfort a participatory workshop series exploring the embodiment of discomfort/comfort in marginalised bodies. They are co-founder of Chronic Collective with Áine O’Hara developing radical access-focused projects working with organisations such as Pallas Projects, Create, Project Arts Centre and Fire Station Artists Studios. Recent awards include Arts Participation Bursary (23,24), Kildare County Council Arts Grant (2024), TBG+S Project Studio Award, Creative Ireland Artist’s Bursary; Create & hablarente International Residency Award.

Siobhán Clancy’s background in socially engaged art informs her current role as Assistant Arts Officer – Community Arts at Cork City Council Arts Office since 2020. Her experience, spanning two decades, includes contexts of youth, health, children, education and community on voice and justice through collaboration. In 2014, she completed an MA in Community Education, Equality and Social Activism followed by a postgrad module in Arts and Health in 2019. Supporters of her collaborative visual and performance work have included Arts Council of Ireland and Create. Exhibition venues include Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Project Art Centre, Dublin. Siobhán has been working with Leitrim County Council on the Social Practice Toolkit since 2018.

Emilie Conway is an award winning vocal jazz artist, composer and lyricist.  Her musical work has 3 areas of focus: on jazz and art/literature, jazz and disability and jazz and children.As an artist with a disability Emilie is a passionate activist for equal and equitable participation of disabled people in arts and culture and has created and developed inclusive and aesthetic access experiences.  In “Solid, Space & Sound (TM)” at the RHA Gallery and the National Gallery Emilie brought her musical, writing and artistic skills to the creation of innovative audio described, sensory, tactile, Braille and movement experiences of cultural space and visual art which are accessible to all, especially visually impaired and blind people. Emilie has performed across Ireland the US, and Europe at festivals and venues including JJ Smyth’s Dublin, Carnegie Hall’s Migrations Festival NYC, The Village Trip Greenwich Village Festival, Sligo International Jazz Festival, The American Writers’ Museum Chicago, Ranelagh Arts Festival, The Bray Jazz Festival, Galway Jazz Festival, Copenhagen Jazz  Festival, and many more.

Joanna Frivet is a lawyer specialised in international criminal law. She began her career in 2010 at the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague and has since made significant contributions to various high-profile cases and legal initiatives advising states, international organisations, non-profits, and victims on matters relating to war crimes, crimes against humanity and Genocide including more recently in Syria, Venezuela,Nicaragua, and Armenia. Joanna holds a Bachelor's degree in Law from Mauritius, was called to the Bar of England and Wales, and has a Master's in International Human Rights Law and International Crime (cum laude) from the Netherlands. Since September 2024 has joined the Board of the Dock pro-bono. Originally from Mauritius, Joanna boasts a rich cultural heritage with African, European, and Indian roots. She emigrated to Ireland in 2016 with her Irish husband to start their family in Leitrim.

Anthony Haughey is an artist and academic. He supervises practice-based doctorates at TU Dublin where he co-founded the Centre For Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research (SEPR). His art works and writing have been widely exhibited, collected and published in museums, galleries and publications worldwide. Recent exhibitions include Changing States: Ireland in the 21st Century, Haus am Kleistpark Berlin; Silent City, National Gallery of Ireland; we make our own histories, National Museum of Ireland; This is What We Call Progress, Crawford Gallery, Cork; Open House, Whitworth, Manchester; Citizen Nowhere / Citizen Somewhere: The Imagined Nation, Crawford Gallery, Cork. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming publication Socially Engaged Art Across Ireland: Contested Narratives, Places and Futures (Cork University Press). He was Decade of Centenaries artist in residence at the National Museum of Ireland 2021-2024 and was recently appointed Creative Places Athy artist in residence 2024-2025.Heart of Glass is a Merseyside-based (UK) community arts organisation that brings together artists and communities to make collaborative art, and provide support, resources and opportunities to artists and anyone interested in socially engaged practice.

Heart of Glass believes that art has the power to bring us together, imagine new futures and create real change. Their aim is to create spaces where people can bring their different lived experience, knowledge and perspectives, in order to understand the world differently, together.

Jo Holmwood is a writer, editor and cultural producer. For 14 years, she worked with Kids’ Own Publishing Partnership, a national arts organisation dedicated to supporting children’s creativity and self-expression through publishing and the arts. During her time with Kids’ Own, she oversaw long-term arts-in-education initiatives, ran professional development programmes with artists across all art forms, and supported collaborative engagement with hundreds of children of all ages and backgrounds—publishing and exhibiting the outputs for national audiences.

Hope and Courage Collective is a national civil society organisation that works with community groups, advocacy groups, trade unions, activists and academics to stop hate organising in our communities and workplaces. They work to make sure that communities across Ireland have what they need to stop far right groups trying to sow division on these issues.

Brian Leyden’s work includes his bestselling memoir, The Home Place, the novels, Death and Plenty, and Summer of ’63, the short story collections, Departures and Sweet Old World: New & Selected Stories. He is the co-writer of the feature film, Black Ice, currently on Netflix. His fiction and essays have been broadcast on national radio and anthologised, including  ‘Winter Papers 2 & 8, eds. Kevin Barry and Olivia Smith. He was one of the founders of the independent imprint Lepus Print publishing poetry, fiction and non-fiction. His play Remember Me premiered in the Hawk’s Well Theatre Sligo in 2023. Most recently Brian was commissioned to respond to the Sligo Wave at the Model Arts Centre on the Sligo landscape tradition from Jack B. Yeats to the present day. He was longlisted for the Nature Chronicles Prize 2024. His new novel is Love These Days.

Pádraig Naughton became Executive Director of Arts & Disability Ireland in 2005.  Working strategically in partnership with the arts sector ADI champions the creativity of artists with disabilities and promotes inclusive experiences for audiences with disabilities.  In 2022 Pádraig graduated with an LLM in International & Comparative Disability Law & Policy from the University of Galway, also that same year The Kennedy Center, Washington D.C., recognized his lifetime achievement with an Excellence in Accessibility Leadership Award.  Currently, Pádraig represents Project Arts Centre as an Expert Collaborator on the Europe Beyond Access consortium.

Iarlaith Ní Fheorais is a curator and writer and the author of the free online resource Access Toolkit for Artworkers. She is an Independent Producer at field:arts, working with artists Bridget O’Gorman, Ebun Sodipo and Lyónn Wolf. She has previously curated the 21st edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and curated Speech Sounds as Curator-in-Residence of VISUAL Carlow. As a writer she has written for publications including frieze, Burlington Contemporary, Viscose Journal and Girls Like Us. She regularly contributes towards public programmes and lectures including at Somerset House, KW Institute, Konstfack University, Royal College of Art and Arts and Disability Ireland. She has sat on numerous selection panels including EVA Platform Commision 2025, Unlimited International Open Award, Edinburgh Arts Festival Platform 2023 and EVA Platform Commissions 2024.

Tamara Samson is originally from South Africa and now happily settled in the hidden heartlands of Leitrim. With a genuine passion for culinary diversity and over 20 years of culinary and hospitality experience, she has dedicated her career to creating wholesome meals crafted with care. Inspired by the power of mindful eating, holistic living and the positive impact of nutritious meals on overall well being, she is deeply committed to using locally sourced, foraged and seasonal produce where possible,  ensuring every meal nourishes the mind, body and soul. Her wish is that every bite is a step towards wellness and harmony. 

Tatiana Santos is a socially engaged artist, journalist and cultural mediator. She holds an MA in Conflict Resolution, with research focused on de-escalating conflicts through arts and education. As one of the leading artists exploring Brazilian rhythms in Irish dance spaces, Tatiana’s work is deeply influenced by themes of migration, belonging, and decolonisation. She uses dance, talking circles and writing to transcend cultural barriers and promote social cohesion. Her recent projects include the award-winning Hive City Legacy at the Dublin Fringe Festival (2022), the solo show Threads with Solo Sirens (2023–2024), and her collaboration with the ongoing Welcoming Project with Catherine Young Dance Company. Her publications include Everybody is a Dancing Body: Using Dance, Talking Circles, and Empathy to Transcend Cultural and Emotional Barriers, which was featured in Create’s Field Notes (2023).

Jijo Sebastian is a collaborative filmmaker with more than fifteen years of experience in participatory, collaborative and transcultural filmmaking in community-based contexts.  Awards received include Artist in the Community Award, Next Generation Bursary, Arts Participation Bursary and Hugh Lane Gallery and Create joint commission in 2023. He has co-written, directed and edited eight short films and one tele-film collaborating with individuals, groups and families from the Keralite Indian community and others in Ireland. His films have been installed in art galleries and screened at national and international film festivals. 

Aaron Sunderland Carey is a mixed media and socially engaged artist whose work connects art, community, and social change. A graduate of NCAD, his practice centers on collaborating with marginalized communities in Dublin, using art as a means to amplify often-overlooked voices. His recent project, Stones, delves into the reciprocal relationship between individuals and their environment, exploring how people are shaped by their surroundings and how they, in turn, influence the community around them. Carey’s work addresses themes such as public planning, marginalization, addiction, masculinity, and class, informed by both personal experience and the stories of those he works with. Through painting, printmaking, and multimedia, Carey fosters conversations that promote social justice, empathy, and human connection.

Dr. Fiona Whelan is a Dublin based artist, writer and Programme Leader of the MA/MFA Art and Social Action at NCAD. 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. These processes are rooted in complex relational networks and typically accumulate over time through a series of public manifestations, including text-based, visual, performative and dialogical artworks, that take direction from the collaborative process and the lived experiences of those involved. Common to all work is an interrogation of multiple power relations that are identified through the process, such as the power relations between police and young people; state-run medical services and patients; national housing policy and those experiencing housing injustice; as well as less tangible power relations experienced as social norms related to class and gender. Fiona is also a committed writer, her writing focusing on the complex relationality, labour and ethical challenges of her arts practice.