Project Description

 

Some In late December 2025 I was awarded a community artist residency with glór for 2026. This was a very special opportunity for me for a number of reasons. As a family carer myself, I am generally not in a position to apply for and take up artist residencies- as these involve traveling and residing elsewhere for a period of time more to work on your practice, which, as a carer and parent needed at home each day, I am not able to do. Therefore this residency, located in my local area, that allows for the time and space to develop, experiment, and foster relations with members of the community is for me, a huge and exciting opportunity.

For the residency I am working with a number of local community-based groups to produce a new body of work to highlight the lived experiences of two groups: people living with disabilities and family carers in contemporary Ireland. 

The goal of the project is to use experimental drawing as a tool to discuss and communicate hard topics, to learn about each other and how we can facilitate a better lived environment for all, using the power of visual art to communicate issues and challenges in an impactful way.

Why drawing? Drawing is deeply democratic- you just need something to draw with and something to draw on. Everyone can draw. If you can hold a mark making tool and press it down onto some sort of surface then you can draw. Drawing transcends language. You don’t need expensive tools. It retrains the brain in how you think. I have a long standing drawing practice and I believe in its power as a tool to unify and to spawn creative ways of thinking.

Part of the residency is facilitating drawing workshops and discussions regularly in glór and off-site with the following groups:

Clare Leader Forum – a Disabled Persons Organisation (DPO) run by Disabled People for Disabled People in County Clare.

Clare Crusaders Children’s Clinic – who provide free therapy and specialist treatment to over 450 young people with special needs in County Clare.

Family Carers Ireland – a not-for-profit nationwide organisation who support family carers and young carers through the provision of free emergency care planning, counselling, specialised training and education programmes, wellbeing support, crisis management, emergency respite/respite provision, advocacy, peer support groups, information on rights and entitlements and many other worthwhile initiatives.

Why these three groups? As mentioned, I myself am a carer to a family member with a disability. This has afforded me much experience of the endless daily challenges and the structural marginalisation faced by both disabled individuals and carers — ranging from social invisibility to economic undervaluation. I believe these two factions of society are two of the strongest and most resilient out there in their lived experience and the work that they do.

I am also very interested in societal labelling and the ‘othering’ of those with disabilities, and in a similar pattern, general societal assumptions made around carers and the job of caring. I am interested in our western structure of the family, and historically, how society has decided whose job it is to provide which duties within this familial structure. I think this is changing, albeit slowly, as is the notion of what caring and being a carer means, in an ageing society where the idea of providing care is still based around historic cultural values but remains hugely undervalued economically. The questions this raises around who we think should be doing the caring and how those who are being cared for are viewed and valued are interesting and essentially are the crux of the ‘hard topics’ which I mentioned at the top of this page.

 

So far:

Now in February 2026, I have held 2 workshops in glór with Clare Leader Forum and have been liaising with the great people of Family Carer Ireland- specifically the Ennis office. I also attended a very interesting family carers forum in Kilkee. Regarding Clare Crusaders, Having met with their parents to explain my intentions, I am kicking off the sessions with my young adult group in the Clare Crusaders buildings in Barefield, Co Clare, this coming Saturday.

What I have learned so far about my groups:

Clare Leader Forum: A group of strongly political, opinionated, brave individuals who have a lot to say, who like a laugh and who all have lived experience of being disabled in contemporary Ireland.  The main themes that have arisen so far through our sessions is about the ‘othering’ of being disabled- how others treat them-  and the economic and political/socio economic challenges of being disabled- like managing disability payments and entitlements.

Family Carers– also a strong, tough bunch of people- really interesting to have heard the stories from those I have met so far- the main challenge at present is availability- they are so busy managing caring and work they have little time for outside projects.

Clare Crusaders– the group I will be working with is mainly 16+ and under 20. They all have intellectual disabilities and the issues raised as important by the Clare Leader Forum- for example how society treats them and the notion of being marginalised- are on the whole, as explained by their parents to me, not issues for them. So I am really looking forward to starting to work with them to see what we come up with.

Below are some photos of the first group session with Clare Leader Forum. They were very warm, friendly and good fun to work with. I really appreciated such a great attendance for our first session.

Clare Leader Forum Session 1:

In our first session we did introductions to get to know each other, because as I pointed out, they knew each other but I didn’t know them. After the introductions we started doing some experimental drawing. Due to the loud protestations of not being ‘able’ to draw I renamed the action of drawing as ‘pencil exercises’ and asked them to scribble, loop, circles, zigzag and dot their pages for timed intervals, getting them to warm up both their hands and their brains. After this we did some partner work, including tasking them with drawing their partner but using their non dominant hand. The next exercise was to draw a self portrait, but with your eyes closed. All of this work was carried out with the intention of moving away from perfection and our tendency to focus on the finished product, but rather trying to explore the process. I find people tend to situate their ability to draw around whatever experience they had in school, and whatever value was attached, or rather what value they perceived remembering being bestowed upon them, in terms of their artistic ability at his time. So my first task is always to try and remove this belief. It was the same when I worked as a personal trainer/fitness instructor. If people hadn’t seen themselves as being good at sport in school they usually didn’t see themselves as having any physical prowess as an adult. So many preconceptions to remove!

After the exploratory drawing we did an exercise where I put up questions and statements on the walls and asked the group to respond to these using post-it notes and sticking them onto the prompts. I like this methodology as it is quite achievable as a task- post-its are small and not intimidating to fill :) See photos of the pages and post-its bellow. We had just enough time to talk through these and quickly discuss before the session finished. It was powerful exercise and helped me understand on a more expansive level some of the main feelings the group have.

 

Clare Leader Forum Session 2:

We, as in myself and the Clare Leader Forum, met again a couple of weeks later. It was an absolutely manky morning, heavy rain, so I was delighted that anyone showed up. We had 6 attendees this time and after doing a lot of warm up drawing consisting of more loose scribbling, again in order to stop thinking about perfection, I then asked them to fill their pages over and over with various objects/animals- for example- feet, faces, flowers, elephants. This was fun- the goal was to show that we all approach a task differently and our outcome is also different- here is a perfect example below- lots and lots of elephants- all different, but nonetheless elephants! It was also a clumsy attempt on my part to visually address the topic of  representation- we all appear outwardly different but our commonality is that we are all humans on planet earth. I enjoyed the different elephants very much.

After our warm up work we moved into group work. I asked them to pair up and have a discussion around what the public doesn’t know about living with a disability in contemporary Ireland. Nice and light topic!

The group partnered up and got talking and writing. The group also kindly allowed me to record the conversation we had, which helped me a lot, as it was a powerful discussion. I was able to transcript the recording afterwords and this has been the beginning of my thinking on how we might construct an installation type art work to culminate the residency.

Clare Crusaders Session 1:

Meanwhile, I started working with a group of young adult service users from Clare Crusaders in mid March. I had brought along lots of large sheets of coloured paper, crayons, pencils, felt tips and scissors- my goal was to get to know the group and just have a fun starter session. All the group have intellectual disabilities and I had met with their parents beforehand. Their parents had pointed out to me that these young adults are not going about their days considering what it’s like to be disabled in contemporary Ireland- that their awareness of their ‘otherness’ through the lens of ablesim is pretty much zero. As it absolutely should be.  The important thing about this group is that they are a happy bunch of young adults who are for the most part unaware and unbothered by how they are seen by mainstream society. Of course they present with a very different set of needs and expectations than the sessions I am conducting with Clare Leader Forum, who as an organisation spend a lot of their time campaigning for disability rights.

I explained to the parents that my goal for this residency overall is to highlight the voices of the groups I had asked to work with. Therefore it’s important to show the experiences of the young people from Clare Crusaders, who, as said, are mostly unencumbered by the social, environmental and cultural othering other disabled persons sometimes experience. This by no means lessens the importance of highlighting their voices and celebrating their lives. If anything I would consider it even more important to show the public that these young adults lead happy fulfilled lives, full of love and kindness, contrary to the wider public narrative that disabled people deserve pity.

In last weeks drawing session we discussed what makes us happy, what our favourite food is, what our homes look like and who lives in them and if we had pets, and we finished off with tracing the outline of the soles of our shoes and making animals from them. The group were receptive, helpful, good fun to work with and generous with their communication and effort. We have our next session next Saturday.

Images from our first workshop with Clare Crusaders young adult services users.

Clare Crusaders Session 2:

Our second session with Clare Crusaders was last Saturday, the last Saturday of March. I was more prepared this time and as promised from the first session, had brought along my Bluetooth speaker so I could play their requested tunes. This went down really well and we did a high octane drawing warm up listening to each others favourite songs. Then while the weather was good we went outside and made life size chalk tracings of each other, and filled them in. This was great and we worked as a team to get this done. See images below. This exercise was to see how we would get on doing further representational work- in session 1 we had drawn our homes, our favourite food, our pets. These life size chalk drawings were to see how the group enjoyed seeing themselves depicted as drawings. The drawings looked really strong, and as the group enjoyed the process it made me wonder might we explore this type of large scale representational drawing further as potential exhibition material.

for the second half of the session we started work on a giant collaborative collage, on corrugated cardboard, using coloured crepe paper. I wanted to start a collaborative work that everyone could contribute to on their own terms and at their own pace. The gang like colours, and this task allowed them to select their preferred colours and tear up or cut off bits of crepe paper to stick on. You can see how far we got below and the different techniques employed by the young people. We will continue working on this after Easter and see if we can cover a larger area and maybe apply paint and crayons also.

Family Carer sessions:

I have also been meeting with family carers- I have had three mid week open studio sessions in glór, and for the most recent two I had invited carers to drop in for a coffee and a chat and to do some drawing. This has been very interesting- I had almost given up on the carer element to the project as I had not had much luck getting carers to engage. This was due to my advertising about the studio sessions on too small a small scale and because of the general unavailability of carers as they are, of course, very busy people. I then tried a different approach- by online advertising and direct emails as to when I would be in glór, and simply inviting people to drop in if they could. The sessions have been very interesting and thought provoking so far.

I decided to try to use prompts as a process initially, as I was unsure who would come along and how I would approach it. I had two lovely people, we will call them A and B, attend the first session. I asked them to respond to the prompts below:

This yielded a very rich conversation and honestly I could have talked to them all day- as a carer myself we found many commonalities but also many differences in our outlooks and approaches. I then asked them to make a drawing to situate themselves in their family. Here is one of the drawings below that were made, which I love. It positions Carer A in the centre of their family- with the kids, dog and cat surrounding them. I love the frantic nature of it :)

The second session was attended by one carer and was again hugely interesting and rich. We went down many conceptual rabbit holes about caring, societal othering, family structures and responsibilities and more. I am going to try advertising the sessions in various shops in ennis as well as online and to do more active drawing in the sessions. I hope to do 2 to 3 more of these drop in sessions.

NEXT STEPS

It is now early April and I am due to hold more sessions over the next two months with each of the three groups.

Outcome: a visual installation?

The challenge is to knit all these learnings and collaborative exchanges and actions into one final visual installation to wrap up the residency and to acknowledge and thank the participants for their contributions. Things I know so far that need to be considered when designing/creating a final exhibition:

interactive– as in it has to ask questions of the audience and there needs to be space/accommodation for the audience to suggest answers within the installation. Possible table with post it notes to add in? or paper to draw on to add to a wall??

multi disciplinary- it will likely combine 2d, 3d work plus performative elements. Ideas I have had based on the sessions so far include constructing a large text based installation, which the groups could potentially walk into the space carrying pieces of text and ‘build’ the installation as a performative element.  Or, a large wall based text installation made of drawings. Or one big drawing, made of a combination of the drawings that will have been done over the different sessions, that come together as one element and contain a question. Spoken word performance on the opening night could also be an option.

Hybrid– there could be different stages to the installation. It opens and starts in one formation. As the week of the installation progresses, it could added to and changed (possibly by audience additional interactive material/potential to rearrange text elements)  so that by the end it is a different installation to the initial iteration.

collaborative: most important all of the above needs to be done with the agreement and creative input of the various groups. The ideas above are partially mine and partially inspired by things that have happened in the sessions.

Bit of mind mapping below to help streamline this morning at glór- early April.

Clare Leader Forum Session 3

I met with Clare Leader Forum again on 18th April. It was great to reconnect and we had a very positive session and got lots done. As I hadn’t seen them in a while I wanted to deep dive back into experimental drawing to start the session.

After this we divided into groups and worked together to answer 4 questions addressing the upcoming exhibition we will install in glór to mark the end of our work together.

Questions and Answers summarised below:

Q 1: Who is the exhibition for

Public/ Everyone in society

Disabled people

Day services / IWA/ Enable Ireland

Family, Friends

Neighbours

Psychologists, Psychiatrists

Politicians and TDs

Tourism industry/ Clare Co Co

 

Q 2: What message to we want to convey

Stop ableism

No barriers

Independent living

Highlight disability in a positive way

We are human too. To be seen without judgement

Show how the publics negative thoughts can impact peoples mental health

That we are good enough and that we matter

Never hide the fact that you have a disability

The economic cost of disability

So people can gain an understanding of what it’s like to be disabled

That we matter/ We are good enough

Our ability matters- we go at our own pace

 

Q 3: Why is this important

To be seen

To educate

To be part of the community

Empathy/ Bonding

Its about rights not charity

Its about ability not disability

What we want- equal opportunities- is completely possible

Come and live in our shoes before you make statements

To express our inner fun/friendship/solidarity/bonding

To get the message out to people on what it is like to live with a disability

 

Q 4: What are we going to make

Using our book- we are human too

Use the quotes on a screen

Recordings/ Video clips of us

A pair or open doors/prison gates

Through pictures and written word

Quotes from the sessions that we have run

 

Clare Leader Forum Session 4

We met again on Saturday 25th April, to start materialising the message. We summarised the activities from the last session, then I asked the group to make a poster of a time when they had encountered ridiculous ableism. This being such a broad topic, we had a great many varied responses, as hoped. I wanted the group to try visualising their issues as opposed to verbalising them, which they are excellent at. I asked them to come up with personal examples, as a personal story is a thousand times more relatable to than a slogan like ‘Stop Ablesim’ to your average punter, who has no idea what ableism is or means. Once people had stopped worrying about drawing stick people we finished and each person presented their poster. Here are some of them below.

Now, I got really excited when these posters were presented and discussed as this was the first time we had successfully made the issues into visuals. Some of which are very powerful. Take Peters image of a girl behind bars in a house. Addressing how disabled people sometimes end up in nursing homes, against their will. Or Desirées drawing of an office space. A space that she was told she wouldn’t be able to work in as she wouldn’t be able to keep up. Or Brians drawing of a child holding a stick. Symbolising his time in a special reform school- of which there were very few and that he was put into without any choice in the matter- when he was questioned about using a cane for support, and was asked did he really need it. Or Martins concern about passing his driver theory test and his worry that people would doubt his ability to drive. Or Noels experiences of interviewing for factory jobs and seeing the interviewers attitude change when he would disclose he takes medication for mental illness. Or Padraic’s drawing of the Government discussing disability issues with no disabled person present- a frequent occurrence apparently. Or Noelle’s experience of being told she would never be able do something- in her case run 16k- by her own family, only to quietly go and complete that exact task.

Then we moved on to direct messaging. I asked them if they could say ONLY ONE thing to the world about what its like to be be disabled today, what would it be. We wrote this on a cardboard placard and then each person presented it. See below again:

These messages are very strong. One of my favourites was ‘Its not me, its you!’ by Anne Marie. Riffing off the break up mantra, it’s not you, it’s me, changing it around and pointing the finger back at the public. I absolutely love this, as to me it sums up the whole crux of the situation so perfectly. I always tell my own daughter who has a physical disability that the world and its attitudes and lack of understanding is not her problem. It reminds us that disability is normal, it’s valid, it’s you, it’s me. It is peoples perceptions that are the fundamental problem, not disability. As Shakespeare said  “nothings either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This is the absolute essence of the whole thing we are doing here I think.

Also the simple statement ‘Live in My shoes’ so perfectly sums it all up. If non disabled people could experience a day being disabled this would help them understand what it’s like more than any placard or lecture. All of the placards re powerful and come from a place of lived experience.

We finished by taking a group photo again, see below:

My to do list for next session:

Sketch out visuals of how our show/installation could look, based on our themes and ideas so far.

Liaise with glór, Clare Crusaders and CLF around the show and future dates and times and sessions.

We have now, after many WhatsApp polls, emails back and forth with the great glór team and other various discoing making configurations we have tentatively agreed on Tuesday 9th as the opening night. Thus I think means the show will run from Tuesday to Tuesday .

I sketched an idea of what it could look like see below:

Show elements: 

Im thinking about a huge wall hanging- with wheelchair track marks and footsteps on it- marks of canes, and walking devices too. this would be our experimental drawing piece. And would be our backdrop large main piece. How to do this? Will have to work it out. could see along the top and bottom and thread a wooden pole into it to hang it and give it shape.

In front would be (perspex?) placards hanging down from the ceiling, the idea being you can see through them- the the slogans the CLF came up with- see above, on the cardboard. I have sheets of perplex and could go to C Signs in ennis to get them cut. Need to research into how paint might work on perspex, or marker even. What I need to consider now is how to incorporate the work from Clare crusaders- see below :

Clare Crusaders Session 4:

OK, today was my last session with my Clare Crusaders crew of Rachel, Isaac, Ciaran and Andrew. Isaac couldn’t attend today so the other three wasted no time starting with an outside painting session on wallpaper lining, which is very strong and can withstand water and all manner of robust painting techniques- which I had learned for a great artist I know Shona. It was a fab sunny day so this worked really well and my 3 attendees today got really into it, trying out different methodologies like using paint dripping/flicking techniques and using their hands as brushes. A success.

Then we went in and had a snack and continued working on our big collaborative collage. The goals was to finish this today and we made very good progress, adding in magazines cut outs and more crepe paper. It was a nice busy session and we played tunes for the second 1/2 of the class, taking turns choosing which one. Once again it was great to work with these kids, they are so good natured and willing to ry out ideas, and to ge the work done. I have two big collaborative pieces now that we have made together that I want to include in the final show, so they can come and visit and see their work up on the wall.

Tomorrow I have the next Clare Leader Forum session. I started my new job with Clare Arts let week and it means all art making now happens in the evenings or weekends. Thats fine in this case as both the CLF crew and the Clare Crusaders group could only meet on Saturdays anyway, which has meant I can see this residency through in exactly the way I had planned.

I bought a 5 metre length of calico to use for our wall hanging backdrop- upon advice from Shane in my local art shop. I tried printing on this this evening, to have something to show the group tomorrow. I was also on to Pete in C Signs, a signage company based locally who I have worked with before. They will cut the perspex and make the signs. We discussed whether decal stickers or acrylics would work on the perspex. I think decals will be better- more clean, and I am hoping we can arrange lighting to cast a shadow of the perspex against the backdrop so you can see the slogans as shadows, which would be amazing.

See the printing tests below:

So tomorrow I will explain the concept of the show. Stuff to decide tomorrow:

Explain and discuss wall hanging.

Who wants to speak at opening

What they will say- poem/speech/piece of writing/song

What each person wants on their perspex banner- slogan- message. Same as what was discussed last week?

How do we want the show to be interactive?

Clare Leader Forum Session 4

So we had a super session today- we were in the studio and in fairness a good gang showed up- Ciara, Desiree, Eoin, Brian, Peter and Ann Marie. Whats now confirmed:

Show is opening on Tuesday June 9th 5.30pm

I went through my plans for the installation- everyone was very happy with it and Ann Marie suggested adding in a maze to the wall hanging in some way. Also the request was made to add cane imprints and Maude (Trish’s assistance dog) paws to it also. Excellent additions!

We discussed the opening night and people are to come back to me with ideas for how they might like to contribute to the opening night- through a poem, a reading, a speech a song.

We went though the slogans we had written on the cardboard in the session before- see above- and together as a group we distilled them down into more positive, dynamic wordings. This was a really interesting and charged experience as we had to think about how to do the with each one. The group were amazing and everyone contributed. It was quite emotional and very powerful.

See the list below of our banner slogans from today:

 

Our show title: It’s not me, it’s you!

 

You can’t live in my shoes 

And I can’t live in yours

So let’s walk together

 

Give me a chance to do the job

 

Its not a day service I’m applying for, it’s a job

 

Let me do it and you will see that I can do it 

 

The world had made us all unique. 

I am who I am.

 

Talk to me, 

Not about me

 

You know nothing about me 

And I know nothing about you. 

 

I am just as capable as you.

Understand!

 

It may take me longer,

But I will get there

 

Separate is never equal

 

Let me be me

And you be you

And let’s not judge each other. 

 

See my disability

See my ability

 

Access to employment is more than a ramp. 

It’s a permanent open door

 

My vote has the same power as your vote

and the last two, which I asked the group to come with phrases on behalf of my clare crusaders group.

 The world would be boring if we were all the same

 We are more alike than we are different

 

Now, To do:

1: look at whether I can find an old wheelchair from somewhere to use to ‘paint’ the wall hanging.

St Joseph’s maybe? Or ask midwest disability services? Ashok?

2: redesign the wall hanging incorporating a maze

3: look at how many perspex banners we can make, there are 16 above. Might need to cut the number back a little or the installation could be too crowded.

4: Next session- either make the wall hanging, or rehearse the performances for opening night

5: feedback table- also the group want to add in  a space where their book ‘We are human too’ can be sold while the show is on. Potentially a feedback table, with a book where comments can be written,  and the book could be placed here?

6: design an invite for the show. this needs to be done this week.