Engagement & Learning

Our Engagement & Learning Department continued to develop an effective hybrid model of delivery throughout 2021 which enabled us to stay connected to communities across the country.

IMMA Outdoors was an important avenue for engagement and in-person family and community workshops which continued at the People’s Pavilion throughout the summer. Engagement with school groups were predominantly online but onsite class visits for primary and second level were facilitated where possible.

IMMA was delighted to welcome three research scholars during the year. Dr Stephen O’Neill was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship by the Irish Research Council to work with IMMA and Trinity College Dublin over a two-year period, focusing on the cultural history of the period 1919-1950 and the impact of partition. Séamus Nolan received a PhD award to work with IMMA and NCAD for a four-year period focusing on minority ethnic groups. And Evan Garza came to IMMA as a Fulbright Scholar. Evan is the co-Curator of the Texas Biennial 2021 with focused research interests in politics, feminism, Black Lives Matter, and indigenous practices. Research is a growing area of importance to the understanding of contemporary art and IMMA will be working with researchers on a variety of themes over the coming years.

A new series of online Curator’s Talks, which were held as part of the IMMA Talks programme, provided an in-depth introduction to each Chapter of The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now exhibition. All talks and seminars are edited post broadcast and made available for public listening on IMMA’s Soundcloud. Highlights from the year included an audio recording from an IMMA/UCC seminar on Paula Rego and a talk by Sarah Ahmed on ‘Complaint, Diversity and other Hostile Environments’.

IMMA’s Residency Programme for 2021 was launched under the title of A Radical Plot, bringing together artists and researchers to work in dynamic ways to reignite the possibilities for creative practice. The themes for the series of residencies included civic agency and concern for the future. A number of important young artists and collectives who worked on A Radical Plot during the year included Aoife Dunne, Clodagh Emoe, Isadora Epstein, Sean Hanrahan, Jan McCullough, Chinedum Muotto, Liliane Puthod, and ANU Productions.

The Dean Art Studios, a new, multi-disciplinary hub located in the heart of Dublin City Centre opened in late 2020. It is a practical response to the contraction of accessible, affordable city workspaces for artists of all disciplines. IMMA worked with The Dean as the lead cultural institution partner to extend IMMA’s Artists’ Residency Programme by allowing four artistic practices to have the use of studio spaces at the Dean Art Studios. IMMA will work with the Dean over the coming year to activate the partnership through a series of events onsite and online.

The EU Horizon 2020 SPICE Project continued throughout the year looking at the participation of minority groups in the arts. IMMA’s case study aims to support groups who are less able to visit the museum physically, such as asylum seekers and children with serious illnesses, to access collections and share their own perspectives. This is an exciting project that is advancing public engagement for marginal groups. In June SPICE launched its first experiment in Citizen Curation, IMMA Viewpoints, in which visitors explored a selection of outdoor works, and discussed how other people may have responded to the same artworks.

The Art & Ageing programme continued online with Talking Art and Armchair Azure events, with 41 additional Azure Programme facilitators added to the Network in the year. Bespoke sessions of Talking Art were also facilitated for Dublin City Council Culture Club and Clann Housing, a social housing project for older people in Dublin’s inner city. The partnership with Creative Ireland was extended to the Laois Arts Office (Culture and Creativity Team) and further funding for Slow-Looking Videos and care home outreach was received from the Department of Rural and Community Affairs, and from the JP McManus Benevolent Fund to run a bespoke Armchair Azure Programme for nursing homes in Clare and Limerick.

The 2021 IMMA International Summer School, Art & Politics, No.3: Containment was an online event once more. The three-week programme of seminars, discussions, and workshops was free-of-charge and featured a range of national and international artists, theorists, and educators. Focusing on the theme of ‘containment’, they explored how mapping, border regimes, architecture, and the politics of incarceration inflect contemporary culture and how art and artists explore, question, and engage with this subject. There were 1,350 participants from 25 countries.