The Glass Garden I & II
Lead Artist: Brian Cregan
Collaborators: Ann Curran, Anthony Haughey, Kate O’ Brien, TU Dublin Photography, Alisha Doody; Oisin McFarland, Valerie Connor, Claire Behan, Billie Johnson
Community Partners: Aosóg Child and Family Project, Stoneybatter, Step by Step Child and Family Project, Smithfield,
Medium: Photography, Visual Art
Website/Social Media: http://briancreganphotography.com/; @BAPhotoDIT
Date: 2017 – 2018
Commission Type: Open Call
Commissioner Name: Grangegorman Public Art Working Group, Grangegorman Development Agency
Per Cent for Art: Yes
Cover image credit: Claire Behan 2018, The Glass Garden 2018
Video Gallery
Background
The Glass Garden by artist- in-residence Brian Cregan involved working with a group of children from the Grangegorman area during 2017- 2018. The artist established a partnership between the newly relocated TU Dublin Photography Department and local communities, Aosóg Child and Family Project, and Step-by-Step Child and Family Project. The children forming the participant group were between ages 8 and 12 and were all attending schools in the Smithfield and Stonybatter areas.
The residency focused on identity, environment and a sense of place through the medium of photography, video and visual art. Inspired by ‘The Grangegorman Masterplan’ for development of the area, a range of creative activities were used to engage the children on their journey of discovery to ‘reach out’ and explore their local community in transition, through art making, learning new skills and gaining experiences in the city and beyond.
Some of these activities included gallery visits, artist talks, historical tours, photography workshops and photobook making. Two exhibitions, one as part of Culture Night, were held on the TU Dublin Grangegorman campus, where the children shared some of their experiences and artworks with family, friends and other members of their community.
- Artist Bios
Brian Cregan
Brian is a lens-based artist who explores the potential of photography to represent our relationship with landscape, natural history and the built environment. Working independently on commissions and assignments, he has successfully collaborated on numerous projects with other artists, curators, educators, designers and architects. He exhibits his work nationally and internationally. His work as an educator is integrated into his practice and often forms the inspiration for new work. He has been designing and facilitating photography/visual arts workshops since graduating from the TU Dublin Photography BA Programme in 2012, where he received first class honours and the DIT Photography medal for best student. He is a Creative Associate working on the Creative Schools programme on behalf of the Arts Council and is a member of the pioneering Arts in Education Teacher
Artist Partnership initiative.Ann Curran
Ann lectures in photography and is Programme Chair of the BA in History from Trinity College Dublin and a Masters in Fine Arts from Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, New York. Her research is concerned with what Hal Foster defines as an archival impulse, that which seeks ‘to make historical information, often lost or displaced, physically present.’ She has exhibited in Ireland and the US and was formerly the Assistant Coordinator for the Media Center at Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester New York. She was the Coordinator of the Central New York Programmers Group based at Cornell University and was active in bringing both documentary and experimental film/video makers to the upstate New York media centre and college circuit.
Anthony Haughey
Anthony is an artist and a lecturer in TU Dublin, where he supervises practice- based PhDs in The Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research and teaches on the Photography programme. His art practice works from the premise of a principal situatedness of art in place and community and its connectedness through dialogic exchange. His solo and collaborative works have been exhibited, collected, and published widely internationally; The National Gallery of Ireland recently acquired his work for their permanent collection. He is currently working on a socially engaged public artwork with the Global Migration Collective commissioned under the Infrastructure programme and Fingal County Council. Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include, ‘Go Down Moses’, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, ‘The Artistic in Documentary, DZ Bank Art Collection, Frankfurt and ‘Citizen Nowhere / Citizen Somewhere: The Imagined Nation’, which opened in the Crawford Gallery in late October 2020.
Geraldine Nugent
Geraldine has been working with children and their families since graduating from UCD in 1983. She has worked and managed residential units for teenagers 1983–1988, before she became a Youth Worker for disadvantaged youth in 1988. After working in other areas of childcare she became the first Project Leader with Aosóg Child and Family Project in 1997, and has been there for 15 of the 20 years the Project has been running in the Stoneybatter area. Since 1983 she has continued in education, parenting training, Early Childhood education, Youth Leadership and Management, Personnel Management to name a few. Over the years as Project Leader, she has supported children in the arts through drama, music, crafts and art, and has worked closely with the Education Department in Collins Barracks, the CYAG for several community arts events (games
of 1916, Halloween) and Aontas events 2001–2006.Paul Ring
Paul began his career with Sallynoggin SCP working with both primary and post primary children. Paul was in this position for 4 years. Following this, Paul coordinated and ran a youth centre in Bray for 1 year before coordinating Bray New Directions Project, a youth diversion project, for 8 years. Paul currently coordinates the Step-by-Step Child and Family Project, working with children between the ages of 5–12 and their families. Paul has an Honours Degree in Humanities, (psychology/sociology) and Postgraduate Diplomas in Counselling and Youth Justice.
- Image Gallery
