Nuacht
Nuacht, How we work | 20 Lúnasa 2025
Developing Our Partnerships
From Tea & Chats to creative workshops with the Hugh Lane Gallery.
We want to listen, explore and learn about what’s important to the people of Dublin, to understand what matters to them and to support them to expand their cultural habits and build cultural confidence. We put people at the centre of our work and focus our expertise on supporting meaningful and lasting cultural participation across the city.
Building on our longstanding partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery, we have recently collaborated with them on their Citywide Salon project. Throughout July and August, we connected four different community groups in the Dublin 1 area that we had met through our Tea & Chats programme, with the Hugh Lane Gallery for a series of workshops to encourage local groups to build a deeper connection with a cultural place that is right on their doorstep.
Tea & Chats is an ongoing programme of informal and open conversations over a cup of tea with people about what matters to them. By listening and connecting, we can build relationships, collaborate and suggest ways for people to explore the city’s culture. Through this programme, our team of Engagement Coordinators facilitate conversations in communities, either in groups or with individuals, all over the city. We apply what we learn from these conversations throughout our projects, with our cultural partners.
For this project, we connected the Hugh Lane Gallery with the New Communities Partnership (NCP) Support Group for Ukrainian Mothers, the Henrietta Older People’s Service, families from Hill Street Family Resource Centre and the Henrietta Adult & Community Education Service (HACE) Men’s Social Club.
Our Engagement Coordinators gathered the groups’ interests, the overall themes of the conversations and the barriers to accessing cultural activities that they had told us about in our Tea & Chats sessions. We then shared this information with the Education and Outreach team at the Hugh Lane Gallery, and made recommendations to ensure each group's full participation in the project.
The Hugh Lane Gallery team matched an artist(s) with each group who designed individual workshops that responded to what the groups had told us. The result was a series of workshops that not only explored the groups’ interests, but also accommodated their specific needs in order to help address some of the barriers they had highlighted.
Our Engagement Coordinators supported the workshops throughout, facilitating a warm and welcoming environment for the group alongside the Hugh Lane’s Fullbright Curatorial Scholar and their Head of Education and Community Outreach. This was an essential part of the project as it ensured consistency across the workshops, helped develop relationships, and gave the groups the opportunity to learn more about further ways they could engage with the Hugh Lane Gallery.
The NCP Ukrainian Mother’s Group worked with Ukrainian artist and facilitator Olga Vnukova on a series of workshops that explored themes of strength, resilience and self-empowerment in their identities as Ukrainian women living in Ireland.
For each session, Olga took the group on a tour of a different part of the gallery and used this as the inspiration for the artworks that they would create. She created a calm and relaxed atmosphere with music and refreshments during the activity and delivered the session entirely in the Ukrainian language to make them fully accessible to all attending.
‘We could connect with ourselves and each other’ - Workshop participant.
‘I was able to forget about my problems. It was a time of relaxation where I could express my feelings’ - Workshop participant.
The Henrietta Older People’s group participated in two workshops held in their usual meeting place in Daughters of Charity Community Services, 9 Henrietta St. For the first workshop, artist Michelle Hall facilitated a ‘Chat and Draw’ session with the group, exploring storytelling, memory and drawing in a friendly environment.
For the second workshop, artist Anca Danila and musicians Johnny Batista, Richard Ng and Segun Akana explored the connections between live music and visual art. In this workshop, participants were encouraged to try drawing in response to a live performance of Jazz music.
‘One of the highlights for me was seeing participants who began just listening and were reluctant to sketch, join in with the rest of the group after only a few minutes - sketching and even dancing, filling the room with smiles and joy all around. It was truly heartwarming and a wonderful reminder of the power of art to connect and engage people’ - Artist who facilitated the workshop.
For some in the group, getting involved in a drawing activity was a new experience, and they were keen to show off their creations:
‘I drew this! I’ve never drawn before!’ - Workshop participant.
HACE Men’s Social Group were invited into the gallery's education space for their workshops, the first with sculptor Kathryn Maguire for a relief moulding session and the second with poet Grace Wilentz. In Kathryn’s workshop, the group were taken through the whole process of relief moulding from cutting the clay and imprinting their materials to mixing and pouring the plaster.
‘I was very impressed by the craft room, the huge amount of work that was involved in setting it up and all the materials for us on hand to use’ - Workshop participant.
In the poetry session, the group were encouraged to reflect on their personal memories to inspire their writing. Many shared their pieces aloud to an encouraging and supportive audience.
‘Definitely the gallery will now be a go-to place for me to enjoy. There definitely is a place for the arts in wellness’ - Workshop participant.
Children aged 2-4 and their parents from Hill St Family Resource Centre were invited to explore the Hugh Lane Gallery and local outdoor spaces with artists Helen Barry and Ashleigh Downey on two separate occasions.
The children were especially excited to play with Helen’s interactive exhibition Boghanna Báistí Beaga (Little Rainbows) in the gallery and to explore Ashleigh’s sensory fairy map in Blessington Basin. The parents were also delighted with how their children engaged with the activities, and had planned to attend the Hugh Lane Gallery’s Art & Outdoors event as a result of attending the workshops.
'This is the longest he has ever drawn for!' - Parent attending the workshop.
We look forward to building on the success of this collaboration and to continuing to strengthen our partnership with the Hugh Lane Gallery. We will continue to explore the potential of how we can collaborate with our partners in this way to bring new opportunities to individuals and communities, so that we can expand cultural habits, build connections and support people to develop their own creativity.