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This summer IMMA Horizons offers you an opportunity to slow down and immersive yourself in creativity. Long summer days are an ideal time to explore something new, take time to reflect, or simply enjoy time spent with others. We invite you to take part in our accessible focused events whether you prefer a quiet, reflective experience or something more tactile, there are plenty of ways to get involved in IMMA Horizons this summer.
Join our Azure dementia-inclusive tours, offering supportive and engaging gallery experiences for people living with dementia, along with their families and carers. Or take part in our Slow Looking sessions, both online and in the gallery, where you can explore artworks at a relaxed pace and share your thoughts in a welcoming environment.
If you are interested in making and creating, our workshops include In the Moment: Art and Mindfulness, as well as textile-based sessions Drawing with Thread and The Reparative Stitch, where you can explore creativity through simple, guided processes with no prior experience needed. You can also take part in Material Transformation: From Sheep to Art, where you will discover how raw wool becomes a creative material through demonstrations, discussion, and making, or join the Turbante-se Workshop, which explores the cultural significance of headwraps alongside practical, creative ways to style and wear them. In addition, Addoley Dzegede, IMMA Dwell Here artist in resident will host a Mordant painting workshop which offers a unique opportunity to experiment with natural dyes and create layered textile imagery.
For those looking to unwind and experience something more immersive, our deep listening workshop combines a slow art tour with a guided sound bath and creative response, offering a calming, sensory way to connect with art through sound, reflection, and mark-making.
Across the programme, you’ll also find opportunities to connect with others through storytelling, performance, and shared creative experiences, including zine-making workshops and live events that include the 5th edition of Sarau Sessions. Whether you drop in for a tour, sign up for a workshop, or simply spend time exploring, IMMA Horizons aims to offers a space to relax, connect, and encourage you to try something new this summer.
Bí Linn! The Horizons Team |
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See below details of our Summer programme where we invite you to slow down, engage your senses and enjoy captivating art experiences in the beautiful surrounds of IMMA. Follow our social media channels to check in on our daily activity on Instagram and Facebook. |
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The Reparative Stitch with Ciara O’Connor
Sat 1 Aug / 11am- 5pm / Creativity Hub
This immersive one-day workshop invites you to explore the rhythmic, meditative act of hand-stitching as a vehicle for navigating personal history and connection. Through a series of intuitive hand-stitching exercises, we will focus on the repetitive nature of the stitch as a grounding practice, allowing ourselves the time to sit with our emotions. We will prioritise the journey of making over technical perfection, providing a supportive environment to sit with the "slow work" of healing/reflection. No previous experience required, all techniques will be demonstrated on the day.
Important: Once you have booked into the workshop, you are encouraged to email an image to hori...@imma.ie of an object you would like to work from (perhaps something or someone important - Ciara’s stitched still life for her father had a can of WD40 and her mother’s had a vintage teacup - it can be anything you like!), and bring a small piece of fabric (a scrap of clothing, old handkerchief, or a remnant) that holds a personal connection, though all essential material’s will be provided. |
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| Drawing with Threadwith Ciara O’Connor
Sat & Sun 25 - 26 July / Sold out
Sat & Sun 29 - 30 Aug / Book Here
This two-day workshop will introduce participants to the fundamentals of Ciara’s ‘Thread Drawing’ techniques, a combination of free motion embroidery, hand stitch and raw-edged appliqué. Through a series of practical demonstrations and one on one tutoring, she will walk you through her process and arm you with the knowledge to begin your own stitchery journey.
Ciara O’Connor is a Kerry-based visual artist whose practice centres on free-motion embroidery as a medium for investigating identity, feminism, and the psychological architecture of recovery. By utilising the rhythmic, repetitive nature of stitch, she recontextualises domestic craft as a vehicle for processing trauma and navigating memory.
This is a two day workshop, please be aware that when you are purchasing your singular ticket for the first day, you are committing to the following day of the workshop also.
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| Slow Looking Art
Online
Wed 8 July / 12 Aug / 1 - 2pm / Online via Zoom
Take a break from the everyday with a lunchtime online art experience to ignite your curiosity. From the comfort of your own location, curator Bairbre-Ann will lead you through an unhurried exploration of a small selection of artworks, with time for you to reflect and make your own creative connections. Cameras can be on or off, and you’re welcome to take part in the chat or simply listen in.
On 8 July, we will explore image and storytelling in the work of Apitchatpong Weerasethakul and Jaki Irvine.
On 12 Aug, we will consider artworks that explore thresholds and liminal spaces, the spaces in between, through the work of Paul Winstanley and Elizabeth Magill. |
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| In The Moment Art & Mindfulness
Sat 4 July / 11 July / 18 July / 11am / Creativity Hub
In the Moment is a seasonal series of workshops for adults that involves mindfulness, exploring art in IMMA’s exhibitions and a responsive creative activity. It is a welcome opportunity to take some time for yourself, to slow down, look closely, connect with the senses and create, in a relaxed atmosphere.
You could be a regular gallery goer, or someone who has never been to a museum before. No experience of art or mindfulness is necessary. Participants are invited to sign attend just one workshop, or multiple workshops during the series. Places are limited, early booking is advised. These workshops are for anyone over 18 years of age.
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| Azure: Dementia Inclusive Art Tours
Fri 3 July / 7 Aug / 11am / IMMA Reception
Azure tours are a free, drop-in gallery experience designed for people living with dementia or memory loss, and their families, friends and carers, held on the first Friday of every 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 for those who can stay on. Seating is provided throughout. If you would like to find out more, please contact Bairbre-Ann by email at bairbrea...@imma.ie and we will be happy to answer any questions you might have.
We also offer bespoke tours for groups of people with dementia/memory loss – to book a group tour, please contact Bairbre-Ann as above.
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| Deep listening with Chloe McHugh
Sat 8 Aug / 11-1.30pm / Creativity Hub
Beginning with a slow art tour in the gallery followed by a gentle, immersive workshop, combining a sound bath with a mindful creative practice. Moving into a guided sound journey to support deep listening, relaxation and embodied awareness, participants are then invited into a creative process inspired by visual music, an art form that explores how sound can become colour, movement and form.
Responding to the sensations, emotions and mental images that may have arisen during the sound journey, this practice supports participants in expressing their experience beyond words. It is not about the image created, but about letting sound move through the body and into marks on the page. No experience is needed. The workshop is open, playful and accessible, offering a calming and creative way to process, reflect and connect through sound.
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| Mordant Painting Workshop with Addoley Dzegede
Sat 15 Aug / 11:30am - 2:30pm & Sun 16 Aug / 11:30am - 1:30pm / Studio 9 & 10
Learn to create imagery with natural dyes in this two day workshop with IMMA Dwell Here resident artist Addoley Dzegede. In this workshop, you will learn how to paint with a thickened mordant and then dye the whole cloth in one dye bath. You will get different shades from the same dye depending on which of the two mordants you use. This is a two day workshop, please note on booking you are committing to the following day. |
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| An ode to the meal that changed my life: Zine-making workshop
Sat 15 Aug / 2 - 4pm / Creativity Hub
This zine making workshop, An ode to the meal that changed my life, is inspired by our favourite foods and stories they hold. Participants are invited to share the story of their favourite food, meal or memory through zine-making, collage art and storytelling.
Together, we'll create a communal cookbook filled with memories and the meals that matter.
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| Sarau Sessions5th Edition
Sat 15 Aug / 2 - 5pm / The People’s Pavilion / No booking required
Since 2022, Sarau Sessions has operated as an artist-led collective gathering shaped by transit and artistic presence. The project proposes performance not as spectacle but as coexistence: a temporary territory where artists in transit meet audiences through experimentation. The People’s Pavilion will become a stage composed of multi-disciplinary performances that includes dance, spoken word, live art, sound, poetic action and hybrid practices that unfold throughout the afternoon. This event embraces equality, accessibility and collective presence. Audiences are invited to come and go freely, wander, rest, return and experience performances partially, accidentally or in deep immersion.
No Booking required. All welcome. … |
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| Slow Looking Art Tourin Gallery
Sat 4 & 18 July / Sat 1 & 15 Aug / 11am / Meet at Reception
Take a moment to delve deeper with IMMA Horizons Slow Art tours.
Slow Art sessions invite you to take a closer look at artworks from IMMA’s Collection and current exhibitions in free, welcoming, conversational tours.
Slow Art encourages you to slow down, and spend time looking closely at one artwork, or a small selection of work, allowing you to engage your senses and to unravel the stories contained within.
This captivating art experience is welcome to all and no experience of art is necessary.
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| Material Transformation: From Sheep to Art
Fri 3 July / 2 - 4pm / Studio 9 & 10
Discover how soft wool transforms into felt in this workshop that includes demonstrations, discussions and making. As a sheep and fibre expert, Katarina Hruskova, founder of WOOLSTORE, will begin the workshop with demonstrations about processing wool. Katarina’s sheep farm provided the wool used in Cecilia Vicuña’s artwork Aran Quipu and participants will get to see how wool is turned into the fluffy wool batting, just like the ones you see in the exhibition. After the demonstrations, textile artist Jinny Ly will briefly share some insight and experiences working with wool, both in her own practice and as an assistant on Vicuña’s exhibition.
But that’s not all – participants will then get to make their own woolly creation using a wet-felting process, which can be taken home at the end of the workshop.
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| Turbante-se: Workshop with Thaís Muniz
Thurs 16 July / 6:30 - 8:30pm / Creativity Hub
Created by artist Thaís Muniz, Turbante-se is a hands-on workshop exploring the history, meaning, and everyday practice of turbans and headwraps across Afro-Atlantic cultures. Participants are introduced to key figures, traditions, and the layered symbolism of headwear, examining its role in identity, politics, art, and non-verbal communication.
The session also includes guided tutorials on how to tie various headwrap styles and create clothing variations using a single scarf.
While the workshop is free, there is a discounted fee for a scarf at €5 euro per person. If you already have a scarf (rectangular shape recommended - 180 x 50 cm), please bring it with you on the day. Just select the free ticket when booking.
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Bairbre Ann Harkin - Health Partnerships CuratorBairbre-Ann is co-curator of IMMA Horizons with responsibility for Health Partnerships. Bairbre-Ann develops programmes focused on art, health and wellbeing, with a particular interest in how access to art can benefit brain health. 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 programming, research and partnerships. |
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| | Sundara O’ Higgins - Community & Wellness Curator
Sundara co-curates the Horizons programme in collaboration with Bairbre Ann- looking after our Slow looking in-Gallery tours, In The Moment workshop series and Studio 10, working alongside our visitor engagement team. She facilitates inclusive, interactive, slow looking tours, workshops and a variety of projects that spark curiosity, creativity, and encourage meaningful discourse. She is an advocate for the transformative effect that art can have on our lives and those of our community members - building resilience, improving health, sparking inspiration and creating connection.
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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. Melissa has 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 meeting friends! If you see her around IMMA, 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: 1: Alberta Whittle, Fisherwoman, Fisherwoman, installation view, IMMA, 2026. Photo Ros Kavanagh. 2: Ciara O’Connor, 20 Minutes of Action, Found fabric, thread, linen. 61 x 52 x 2cm, 2022. Photo Lynda Kenny. 3: Ciara O’Connor, Welcome to The Club, Found fabric, thread, linen, 61 x 52 x 2cm, 2022. Photo Lynda Kenny. 4: Jaki Irvine, Old conditions for new love, 2008, lightjet print on fuji crystal paper, 80.8 x 99.1 x 5.3 cm, Collection IMMA. Gift, Kerlin Gallery Collection, 2018. 5: Camille Souter, Fisherwoman, Fisherwoman, installation view, IMMA, 2026. Photo Ros Kavanagh. 6: IMMA Horizons Curator, BairbreAnn Harkin facilitating an Azure session with Irish Dementia Working Group. Photo Killian Waters. 7: Chloe McHugh, image courtesy of Sonas Sounds. 8: Addoley Dzegede, work in progress. Image courtesy of artist. 9: Image courtesy of Victory Nwabu-Ekeoma. 10: Image courtesy of Sarau Sessions. 11: Camille Souter, Fisherwoman, Fisherwoman, installation view, IMMA, 2026. Photo Ros Kavanagh. 12: Image courtesy of Jinny Ly. Photo by Tra My Nguyen Hoang 13: Image courtesy of Thaís Muniz. Photo by Ethal Ruth.
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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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