To be what we are

An installation built to hold a space for play, this workshop-world was co-created with children and their adults as a document of a creative laboratory exploring artistic play.

Come behind the curtains into a world we have built for flying, printing, pouring, moving, marking, transforming, framing, bickering, being and becoming art. A special transitory place of wild imagination where paint flies, glows and settles into art. A place where children transform to monsters, artists and magical creatures and where values, traditions, cultures, myths are born, rehearsed, believed and turned on their head.

The artists are Annalise, Candy, Cheryl, Bernie, Bridgie, Helen Marie, Jennifer, Jimmy, Jimmy, Kathleen, Mariah, Mossie, Rihanna, Ruby and Theresa, children from Traveller families living in the Knocknaheeny and Farranree areas. They are locally known as the ‘Groups’ and have been active as an after school art group for the past 15 years run by Deirdre O’Regan and more recently Maeve McCarthy (Springboard Family Services) and Noreen O’Regan (Cork City Partnership).

They explored art and constructed a space to play together with Eszter Némethi and filmmaker Claire Murphy. This play-based methodology was developed in collaboration with the artists, Helen O’Reilly, Ann Stokes, Maeve McCarthy, and Susan Holland (Cork Midsummer Festival).

Supported by Arts Council Arts Participation Project Award, Creative Europe BePart Network, Springboard Family Services, Cork
City Partnership. This project is part of the Creative Europe funded BEyond PARTicipation, exploring methodologies and possibilities of participatory co-creation.

Image credit Jed Niezgoda.