The AgILe lab creates spaces where individual biographical narratives from different life contexts are brought into safe, mediative and deliberative spaces. The role of the arts in giving creative expression to biographical elements and, vitally, as an approach to mediate their coalescence across difference topics and arenas is a powerful approach used within AgILe.
Artists have been engaged in collaborative work for several projects and events:
AgriGLOW, (2025) Collaboration with Irish & EU artists and social scientists to co-create a framework to understand, interrogate and co-generate ‘attractiveness’ of agriculture, engaging producers, farmers, growers, NGOs and the public – from production to consumption.
Understand Agriculture, Golden Jubilee Trust (2021): exploring the potential of artistic perspectives, modes and formats in reframing agriculture beyond conventional narratives, creating spaces for new interpretations and dialogues between agricultural production and consumption communities.
CERERE Project (Horizon 2020, 2017-2019) – Collaboration with Sadhbh Gaston in her creation of an ancient grains exhibition based on cross-stich embroidery ‘GRAIN 1-5’, which toured prominent agricultural sites across Teagasc and innovation hubs, engaging over 1000 farmers and farm advisors.
Agri-CULTURE (Bord Bia & SKIN Project, Horizon 2020, 2017-2020) – Collaboration with Deirdre O’Mahony, exploring the experience of rural identities in the context of Short Food Chains, linking producers, intermediaries and consumers, and the importance of relationships for solidarity in co-creating resilience, see FARM by Deirdre O’Mahony
VERGE Symposium (2018); Speaking of Which… (2018); AlterRurality (2016) – Contributed to exchanges on socially engaged art practices in rural and agricultural contexts, critically engaging with the intersection of place, memory, and artistic expression.
TULCA Festival (SKIN Project, Galway, November 2017) – Curated an event as part of the contemporary visual arts festival, combining a participatory, interactive social network analysis with Domestic Godless, culinary artists, using food as an artistic and conceptual medium, challenging conventions of taste, identity and heritage.
Rural and Country Life 1916-2016 (Teagasc, June 2016) – Curation of the Event’s Arts programme, integrating traditional Irish oral storytelling forms, exploring how spoken narratives, oral story-telling, traditional song & music preserve cultural heritage but also and evoke revitalisations. The programme also platformed Uniformity from Griffith College fashion students. The event attracted over 60,000 people over two days.
Rural Women of 1916 – What did they Say? (2016) – Collaboration with artist Deirdre O’Mahony, Historian Mary Clancy and Sociologist Anne Byrne, develop an audiovisual display of women’s narratives, expanding the historical narrative beyond dominant perspectives. The exhibition launched at Rural and Country Life in June 2016, and was subsequently featured in Teagasc sites nationally and at DAFM.
FarmFest and Bioenergy (2008) – curation of the full arts programme for the event, using creative practice to engage the public in the topic of bioeconomy and sustainability transitions, attended by over 12,000 attendees. A special programme was developed for younger attendees and children.