Virtually There Residencies with Kids Own Publishing Partnership 2013-2021
Virtually There was a long terms series of residencies with 3 Schools in Northern Ireland. The longest residency was at Killard House Special School in Donaghadee. I communicated with the class every week from my studio. We had ‘Real Visits” at the beginning the middle and end of each year. During the real visit we set the co-ordinates for the project and used these experiences to navigate a course co-creating the programme from these reference points. We always made a visit to The Mac Gallery in Belfast and a visit to Mount Stewart National Park. So our reference points were experiences together in Art and in Nature. We explored themes that arose from our encounters with artworks took these out into nature and relied on our memories to share our responses later in the classroom and online. It was a live mapping of our experiences together both virtually and in person and for me this way of working paved the way to this time now of restricted movement, memory and intimacy in distance during the pandemic of 2020-21. I see my work with people as a kind of mapping of experience and a continual process documenting of ideas and responses as they arise. During our sessions there are two live Nodes in Virtuallly There, one at each end of the country,studio and classroom and we are joined by a screen which is the semipervious membrane upon which we elaborate and pass ideas through. We exhibited work from this project at multiple venues nationwide along the way, culminating in Virtually There at the University of Ulster at the beginning of the first lockdown in 2020.
Virtually There at Killard House – Kidsown Publishing Partnership – Sadly the most recent dedicated website was hacked and is no longer available.
You will find ARCHIVED Virtually There Projects below
web address:
http://projects.kidsown.ie/killard-house-school-artist-journal/
web address:
http://projects.kidsown.ie/sacred-heart-primary-school-artist-blog/
web address:
http://projects.kidsown.ie/our-lady-of-lourdes-artist-blog/
The SODACAKEVILLE Project with Northside Learning Hub, Limerick
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