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Creative Brain Week at IMMA
IMMA Horizons Spring Programme is excited to host Creative Brain Week at IMMA with a day long programme exploring Thinking Better Together: Unseen Senses.
On Friday 6 March 2026 IMMA will host Creative Brain Week, an international initiative celebrating the relationship between creativity, brain health and wellbeing. Creative Brain Week brings together artists, scientists, health professionals and cultural organisations to explore how creative engagement supports cognitive health and enriches everyday life.
IMMA’s participation reflects the museum’s ambition to be radically public, creating a space that is open, welcoming and meaningfully connected to diverse communities. Creative Brain Week at IMMA will celebrate and explore the idea of radical hospitality, asking how cultural institutions can actively care for, listen to and include people through generosity, openness and shared experience.
Framed around the theme Thinking Better Together: Unseen Senses, this day long event draws on contemporary neuroscience, which has expanded our understanding of the human senses far beyond the traditional five. Today, researchers recognise up to 20 distinct sensory systems, including proprioception, balance and internal senses related to pain, temperature and immune response. As our understanding of sensory experience deepens, so too does awareness of how closely perception is intertwined with belonging, inclusivity, acceptance, health and wellbeing.
Across the day, IMMA Horizons will host a series of conversations and creative experiences that consider the role of the arts in supporting brain health and wellbeing. Contributors from across the arts, health and research sectors will come together to share insights and reflect on how creativity can foster connection, curiosity and belonging. Please follow the link to learn more about Creative Brain Week. Events are free but capacity is limited so please book early to secure your place. We look forward to welcoming audiences to IMMA for a day that celebrates creativity as a shared human resource and affirms IMMA’s role as a radically public space for learning, care and connection.
Thinking Better Together: Unseen Senses takes place on Friday 6 March at IMMA. The event is now fully booked, however we welcome you to sign up to our waitlist by clicking this link and you will be notified if places become available closer to the date.
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| Towards Spring: Reflections on Imbolc and Lunar New Year
As winter fades and spring blooms, many cultures mark this moment of change with festivals focused on renewal and new beginnings. The two we will focus on are St Brigid’s Day/Imbolc and the Lunar New Year—also known as the Spring Festival. Although they come from different traditions, they share a deep connection to nature, tradition, and rebirth. These themes are echoed in Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey, an exhibition by artist, poet, and activist Cecilia Vicuña at IMMA. The exhibition is inspired by Vicuña’s journey from the Andes to Ireland and her discovery of ancient connections to this landscape. Like Imbolc and Lunar New Year, her work reflects cycles of return, remembrance, and renewal. Cleaning and clearing are important parts of both festivals. At Imbolc, Brigid’s crosses or dolls made from natural materials are placed in the home as symbols of protection and new life. During Lunar New Year, homes are cleaned to leave bad luck behind, and red lanterns and decorations are hung to welcome good fortune. In a similar way, Vicuña uses ancient forms, such as the quipu - a system of knotted cords - to reconnect past knowledge with present concerns about the environment and community. Honouring ancestors and deities is another shared tradition. Lunar New Year includes visits to graves or home altars with offerings to family ancestors. Imbolc honours Brigid, the Celtic Goddess linked to fertility, life, fire, craftmanship and poetry. At IMMA, Vicuña’s sound and poetry works, including Mourning Dialog, draw on oral traditions and natural sounds, inviting visitors to listen closely to voices from the past and the natural world. Public celebration and creativity are central to all three. Imbolc is marked by craft, poetry, and gatherings, while Lunar New Year fills streets with colour, music, and dance. Vicuña’s performances and installations continue this spirit, encouraging shared reflection and connection. Together, these festivals and the exhibition invite us to welcome spring by slowing down, remembering what connects us, and imagining a more caring relationship with the world around us.
IMMA Horizons presents a new edition of the popular Slow Art Video Series. Guided by our Visitor Engagement Team, this series offers a deeper engagement with artworks from the exhibition IMMA Collection: Art as Agency. This month the series explores Jack B. Yeats painting St Stephen’s Green, Closing Time, click here to view the video. Upcoming featured artists will include Gerard Dillon, John Kindness, Vik Muniz, Robert Ballagh, Joan Jonas, Lucian Freud and Giorgio de Chirico. This series extends access to those who cannot visit in person and includes ISL. Scroll down to read details of our March/April programme where we invite you to slow down, engage your senses and enjoy captivating art experiences in the beautiful surrounds of IMMA. You can also follow our social media channels to check in on our daily activity on Instagram and Facebook.
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| | IMMA Horizons presents a new edition of the popular Slow Art Video Series. Guided by our Visitor Engagement Team, this series offers a deeper engagement with artworks from the exhibition IMMA Collection: Art as Agency. This month the series explores Jack B. Yeats painting St Stephen’s Green, Closing Time, click here to view the video. Upcoming featured artists will include Gerard Dillon, John Kindness, Vik Muniz, Robert Ballagh, Joan Jonas, Lucian Freud and Giorgio de Chirico. This series extends access to those who cannot visit in person and includes ISL. |
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| Talking Art
Slow Looking Online
Wed 11 Mar / 1pm / Online - exploring the artwork of Emma Amos & Alice Rekab
Wed 8 Apr / 1pm / Online - exploring the artwork of Vik Muiz & Michael Craig-Martin
Take a break from the everyday with a captivating lunchtime, online art experience. From the comfort of your own location, IMMA guides will lead you through an unhurried exploration of works from IMMA’s Collection. This virtual experience offers an opportunity to deepen your connection with art and cultivate a more mindful approach to viewing. Regular participants often return, creating a relaxed and welcoming atmosphere. Cameras can be on or off and you’re welcome to take part in the chat, type your response, or simply listen in! |
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| Talking Art
Slow Looking
In-Gallery Tours
21 Feb / 7 Mar / 21 Mar /4 Apr / 18 Apr / 11am
Meeting point IMMA Reception
Slow Art encourages us to delve deeper by spending time looking closely at one artwork, or a small selection of work.
Together, we explore how art can ground us in the present moment, invite curiosity, and open pathways of connection - to ourselves, to others and to the world around us.
Slow Art tours are open, conversational and inclusive - you don’t need to have any experience with museums or art to attend.
Book below or drop in on the first and third Saturday of every month. |
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| CommunityWorkshops
Are you a community group looking to engage with IMMA?
IMMA Horizons offers co-created, inclusive, art, mindfulness and creative workshops to community groups at no cost.
If you’re interested in booking at a time that suits your group please contact hori...@imma.ie.
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| Azure: Dementia Inclusive Art Tours
Fri 6 Mar / 11am / IMMA Reception There will be no Azure Fri 3 April as IMMA is closed on Good Friday.
Azure in-person tours are a free gallery led experience designed for people living with dementia and their families and friends, held on the first Friday of the month. During Azure, you will explore a selection of artworks with a facilitator who has received special training in dementia-inclusive arts programming. These tours are followed by complimentary tea/coffee.
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Bairbre Ann Harkin - Health Partnerships Curator
We are delighted to welcome Bairbre-Ann back after maternity leave! Bairbre-Ann is Curator of IMMA Horizons with responsibility for IMMA’s Health Partnerships. Bairbre-Ann develops creative programmes focused on art, health and wellbeing. She previously led IMMA’s Art & Ageing initiatives, championing inclusive and dementia-aware engagement and fostering key partnerships with collaborators such as Age & Opportunity, Global Brain Health Institute, Mercers Inst. for Successful Ageing (St James Hospital) among others. She initiated IMMA Horizons in 2023, exploring how creativity can enhance health, wellbeing and quality of life through art. To contact Bairbre-Ann, email her at bairbrea...@imma.ie.
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| | Sundara O’ Higgins - Community and Wellness Curator
Sundara curates the Community & Wellness strand of the Horizons programme - she works at the intersection of Art, Health Ecology and Community, drawing on an understanding of the social determinants of health - in particular access, social connection, and the cultural and environmental conditions that enable us to thrive. Through partnerships with external collaborators she facilitates inclusive, interactive, slow looking tours, workshops and events that spark curiosity, creativity, that encourage meaningful discourse. She is an advocate for the transformative effect that art can have on our lives and our community - building resilience, improving health, sparking inspiration and creating connection.
To contact Sundara, email her at sundara....@imma.ie |
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| | Melissa Ndakengerwa - EDI executive
Melissa is the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Executive – Public Engagement, where she works with the team to create meaningful workshops and events that resonate with diverse audiences and foster a sense of belonging within the museum’s community. Last year, Melissa co-created various experiences at IMMA, bringing new experiences to the IMMA Horizons programme. She is dedicated in the continuation of making the programme as accessible to everyone. While she’s not at work, Melissa enjoys going to different events, dancing, reading and hanging out with friends. If you see her around IMMA, please say hi!
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| | Donations big and small are gratefully accepted and are vital for the development of IMMA's ambitious programmes. If you would like to support us, you can make a donation by clicking the button below. Thank you. |
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| | | Images, from top: Creative Brain Week. Image 2: Cecilia Vicuna, Installation view Reverse Migration, a Poetic Journey, IMMA 2025/2026. Photo Ros Kavanagh. Image 3: Emma Amos, American Girl, 1974. Image 4: Slow Looking Tour featuring work Meditation Painting 11 by Patrick Scott. Photo: Lucy Jorgensen. Image 5: Community Workshop at IMMA. Image 6: Azure Tour at IMMA.
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| | | | Ospidéal Ríoga
Cill Mhaighneán
Baile Átha Cliath 8
DO8 FW31, Éire |
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| Royal Hospital
Kilmainham
Dublin 8
D08 FW31, Ireland |
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