WITCHES, WIZARDS AND WANDS 
TUE 01 NOV 11AM-1PM
EXTRA CLASS ADDED: 1.30PM-3.30PM
€10 PER CHILD (ACCOMPANYING ADULT FREE) 
4-6 YEARS / DRAIOCHT WORKSHOP ROOM
After the success of last years puppets join us again over the Halloween mid-term break to make some weird and wonderful puppets inspired by this magical time of year. Feel free to come dressed up!


CLIMB INTO THE SPIDER WEB 
WED 02 NOV 11AM-1PM
€10 PER CHILD
7-9 YEARS / DRAIOCHT STUDIO
Join artist Genevieve Harden for this innovative workshop that explores art and play together in a fun way. First we’ll create a giant spider web in the workshop space before making puppet like spiders to help you navigate your way though the web to safety!


DEADLY DECOUPÁGE 
THU 03 NOV 11AM-1.30PM
€10 PER CHILD
10-13 YEARS / DRAÍOCHT WORKSHOP ROOM
Transform an ordinary table into a individually decorated piece of furniture for your room using decoupage techniques with artist Deirdre O’Reilly. Participants could create a Twilight or Harry Potter table by bringing along cut outs if they wish.


Places are limited so early booking is advised on t: 01-8852622

Draíocht is delighted to host this exhibition of photography created by the participants of Draíocht’s Intergenerational Project, who have been working steadily since November 2010 with Draíocht’s artist in residence Garvan Gallagher.

This photography-based project involves both transition year students from a number of second level schools and older residents (retired or 65yrs+) of the Dublin 15 area. It aims to provide interested students and older members of the community with an opportunity to learn about photography in a hands-on way in a creative environment.

Since mid November 2010, the participants, under the guidance of Garvan Gallagher are working towards the creation of an exhibition of work in Draíocht’s First Floor Gallery Space in April 2011. The group visit Draíocht once a week to participate in specifically designed workshops to introduce them to the basic conventions of photography and the discipline of photo taking and development. During the workshops the group discusses themes for the exhibition; they have made their own pinhole camera, learned about shape, form, contrast and colour, and have begun to produce photographs in our purpose build Dark Room in Draíocht’s artist’s studio. The ultimate aim of this project is for each participant to produce photographs of his or her own, to experience a high quality arts project and to investigate the pre-conceived perceptions and stereotypes that these two groups may hold about each other. The project will culminate in an exhibition of participants work in Draíocht’s Gallery Space during Fingal’s Annual Spréacha Children’s Festival in April 2011.  This will give an artistic voice to those members of our community that are often least heard - the youngest and the oldest.

EXPLORING THE EXHIBITION
Join Artist in Residence Garvan Gallagher and participants from this project on 5 May 2011 from 7.30pm to discuss the creative process behind their work and gain an insight into their experience of working on this project. This is a free event but booking is advisable through Draíocht’s Box Office, tel: 01-885 2622.
For further information about Draíocht’s Intergenerational Project, please call Sarah Beirne on 01-809 8029 or Niamh Ryan on 01-809 8026.

Download the Exhibition Catalogue here ...

This is our first unique family day for children with disabilities between the age of 8-13 years and their families. Facilitated by Draíocht’s artists, families work together to create art in a hands-on way, focusing on different themes and exploring various artworks in the galleries. If you are unsure if this day is suitable for your family please contact Sarah Beirne on 01-8098029.
Please note, Draíocht is a fully accessible venue ... read more about our accessibility here

Family Day Notes: No booking is necessary – just drop in on the day / Dress for Mess / These activities are designed for children with disabilities from 8-13 years, though younger and older siblings are welcome to try their hand too / Please be aware that Draíocht’s Family Days are not designed for groups / All children must be accompanied by an adult … and all adults must be accompanied by a child!

Taking place during November and December 2010, this exciting project gives 3^rd and 4th primary class students the opportunity to explore, respond and interact with Draíocht’s visual arts programme with artists Ian Slattery and Genevieve Harden. 

From the 1st week in November, participating students will visit Draíocht for a facilitated visit to 'Playboys, Paycocks and Playbills', an exhibition of poster designs from The Abbey Theatre from the 1970s & 1980s. This exhibition features the acclaimed art work of two graphic designers Kevin Scally and Brendan Foreman. The large and colorful posters exhibit changes over time in graphic design and showcase many different styles of printing. 

Following this visit, Draíocht’s artists will come to your classroom once a week to facilitate a series of hands on workshops. During these workshops students will be encouraged to respond to the exhibition they have seen with design ideas, experimentation and poster invention using the theme ‘This is Me …’. Through these 1-1½ hr workshops students will learn about the history of print and some elements of poster design. They will get the opportunity to work with a number of different tools, such as a miniature printing press and print rollers, as well as different materials, from bubble wrap to printing paint. The project will culminate in the creation of a piece of art that will tell us who they are.

The project is open to all 3rd and 4th classes in the Dublin 15 area. Classes must be available to participate in all elements of the project. If you would like your class to get the opportunity to participate in this project, please contact Sarah Beirne on 01-8098029 or sarah@draiocht.ie by Friday 15 October (limited to 3 classes). Selected classes will be contacted by Thursday 21st of October 2010.

Using our exhibition of colourful Abbey Theatre Posters as a starting point, our artists will help you create a graphic master piece to adorn your bedroom wall.

Family Day Notes: No booking necessary - just drop in at any stage / Please wear old clothes / These activities are designed for children from 5-10 years, though younger and older siblings will be welcome to try their hand too / All children must be accompanied by an adult … all adults must be accompanied by a child / Please be aware that Draíocht’s Family Days are not designed for groups.

Book through Draíocht’s Box Office: 01 8852622

Dive into Drama
Explore an exciting range of drama techniques, and learn the tricks of professional performance by joining us for a week of drama workshops culminating on the Friday evening with a performance in our studio space for family and friends.
Mon 5 - Fri 9 Jul 2010  11am- 1:00pm // Drama Workshop A (9-12 years)// €45
Mon 5 - Fri 9 Jul 2010 2pm- 4pm // Drama Workshop B (14-18 years) // €45

Get into Action - Film Making
From original concept, storyboard, editing to finished product, come to Draíocht this summer and learn everything you need to know about film making.
Mon 12 - Fri 16 July 2010 11am-1pm // Film Workshop A (10-13 years) // €45
Mon 12 - Fri 16 July 2010 2pm-4pm // Film Workshop  B (14-18 years) // €45

Art Explorers
These workshops are for children who love to explore visual arts. During the week participants will get the opportunity to work with a range of materials, dry and wet - so wear old clothes just in case!
Mon 26 - Fri 30 Jul 2010 11am-12pm // Art Workshop A (4-6 years) // €40
Mon 26 - Fri 30 Jul 2010 1pm-3pm // Art Workshop B (7-9 years) // €40

Access Places:  If you would like to nominate a child to participate in any of the summer projects who may not have the fee, please contact Sarah Beirne, Children & Youth Arts Co-ordinator on 01 8098029, or email sarah@draiocht.ie in confidence and enquire about access places. Draíocht is committed, within its resources, to access to the arts for all young people.

Join us (and people all over Ireland) to scribble, colour in and create wonderful drawings to celebrate Ireland’s National Drawing Day. Inspired by Holly Dungan’s exhibition of beautiful drawings of trees, we will work to create a drawn forest in our exhibition space.

Family Day Notes: No booking necessary - just drop in at any stage / Please wear old clothes / These activities are designed for children from 5-10 years, though younger and older siblings will be welcome to try their hand too / All children must be accompanied by an adult … all adults must be accompanied by a child / Please be aware that Draíocht’s Family Days are not designed for groups.

Come and be inspired to by our European Baskets exhibition, and begin a craft making career of your own with the help of our artists and your parents and guardians.

Family Day Notes: No booking necessary - just drop in at any stage / Please wear old clothes / These activities are designed for children from 5-10 years, though younger and older siblings will be welcome to try their hand too / All children must be accompanied by an adult … all adults must be accompanied by a child / Please be aware that Draíocht’s Family Days are not designed for groups.

Over a seven week period well known artist and sculptor Cris Neumann will facilitate the creation of 3D works by Coolmine and Hartstown Community School students in a project that will be a fun reflection of Vodafone Ireland’s Green Agenda Policy. This educational and environmentally innovative visual arts project will explore the concepts of communication, mobility and technology and how these concepts can work in the reduction and recycling of waste. The art works resulting from the project will generate zero waste by being produced from Vodafone Ireland’s recycled materials. This process will work to educate students about the importance of environmental awareness, while giving them an opportunity to improve their arts skills.

The project will culminate in an exhibition in Vodafone Ireland’s HQ, before travelling to Draíocht’s First Floor Gallery for an exhibition during the Easter holidays.

You can stay in tune with the project at the following dedicated website: http://www.makeartnotrubbish.com

Here's a YouTube video to sum up the project

School Workshops: October - December 2009
Exhibition: 14 Dec 2009-14 Jan 2010, First Floor Gallery, Draiocht

ARTstronomy was the name of Draíocht’s primary school art and science project celebrating 2009 as the international year of astronomy, which took place over a 6 week period with 5th and 6th class students from 3 local Dublin 15 schools; St. Francis Xavier Senior National School (Ms. Corrigan’s 6th Class), Scoil Bhríde Cailíní (Ms. Moran’s 5th Class) and Scoil Oilibhéir (Iníon Ní Dubghaill’s 6th Class). In all 87 students and their teachers took part in the project, exploring both the universe and various art forms.

The project started in Draíocht where students took part in a ‘Deadly Moons Workshop’, created and presented by artist and astronomer Deirdre Kellegan. This workshop is presented in conjunction with UNAWE (Universe Awareness for Young Children), an international outreach programme which is a cornerstone of the international year of astronomy.

Then the students went to visit Dunsink Observatory during science week (8-15 November 2009) and had the opportunity to see the historic Grubb Telescope, located in the South Dome of the Observatory, as well as receive an illustrated astronomy lecture.

Finally, it was back to the classroom for a series of visual arts workshops with artist Anne Kelly, where students created their own lunar landscape, complete with deadly moons made from chalk, and life-size clay space men.

Draíocht was delighted to recreate this beautiful lunar landscape in our First Floor Gallery for all to enjoy from 14 December 2009 to 14 January 2010.

A taste of the children’s comments about the project are below, and these were displayed alongside the work:

“I learned that there is more than one moon, and it’s not made out of cheese”

“I learned that Phoboas looks like a potatoe”

“The deadliest moon is Mimus because it looks like the “Death Star” and I’m a Star Wars fan”

“I would name my moon Aingeal Mhór (which means Big Angel)”

“I learned that some moons have Oceans inside them”

“When I look up at the sky at night I see cheese because it looks like cheese”

Enjoy a video montage of the project made by artist and astronomer Deirdre Kellegan

Enjoy a montage of the Gallery Launch pics made by Draiocht

And you can view our Gallery Launch images on Flickr too

Draíocht is delighted to announce a very special event in partnership with Children’s Books Ireland and Simon and Schuster UK. Multi award-winning author Sophie McKenzie will be visiting Ireland for the very first time as part of the national Children’s Book Festival celebrations! Sophie is probably best known for her award-winning thrillers Girl, Missing (winner of the Red House Award for Older Readers in 2007) and Blood Ties (overall winner of the Red House Children’s Book Prize 2009). The Set-Up, the first title in her new Medusa Project series, was launched earlier this summer to great acclaim and further fantastic titles are already in the pipeline. Sophie’s fans include Richard and Judy and teen-author Robert Muchamore, as well as many thousands of young readers across the globe! If you’re not already one of them you soon will be, so come and join us for what promises to be one of the highlights of the Children’s Book Festival programme!

Suitable for 5th & 6th class groups

This is a free event but must be booked in advance

Book through Draíocht’s Box office on 01 8852622. Limited to one class per school initially but a waiting list will be in place for other classes.

Once again transition year students from Hartstown Community School will explore the world of theatre with us by attending key productions at Draíocht to develop their critical eye and by creating a Virtual Production of their own. Each student will get the opportunity to take on the role of one of the many people it takes to produce a show - they’ll manage a budget, create a schedule, design sets and costumes, rehearse scenes and also get to meet directors, actors and producers. By picking their own play to virtually produce, they will experience first hand the hard work that goes into producing a piece of theatre that audiences would virtually love to see.

To celebrate European Year of Intercultural Dialogue 2008, the Chester Beatty Library and Draíocht Arts Centre, Blanchardstown, are collaborating in a unique project involving primary school children from multi-ethnic backgrounds living in the Dublin 15 area. With Blanchardstown being the fastest growing area in the country, with the youngest population (over 40% of the population of Fingal is under 15 years of age), and representing 100 nationalities (21% of its population), it is the perfect location for an intercultural project of this kind.

The goal of ‘Tell Your Story’, devised by Draiocht and Chester Beatty Library, is to provide positive arts experiences around storytelling in order to build language skills, confidence, arts awareness and multicultural understanding through highlighting commonality and celebrating difference.

The project began on the 31^st of March with a field trip to the Chester Beatty Library, located in the grounds of Dublin Castle and a tour of the library’s collection. Members of Chester Beatty Library Education Department’s freelance team guided the children through the visual feast that is the collection of artistic treasures from some of the great cultures and religions of the world, including treasures from Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe. Full of inspiration, the children returned to their classrooms to start a series of over 50 workshops in storytelling, poetry and visual arts taking place over six weeks with the project’s skilled artists and practitioners from both organizations.

Twenty nationalities are represented by the 148 children (including Albanian, Filipino, Irish, Kazakhstani, Latvian, Nigerian, Saudi Arabian and Zimbabwean children), who are aged between 6 and 12 years, and this project will encourage each child to tell their own individual story. By listening to their class friends, the children can enjoy and explore each other’s cultural heritage, encouraging them to share, create and celebrate the stories that are important to them. These sessions are sure to lead to exciting new discoveries and friendships as the children get to know more about each other and the many cultures they represent.

After six weeks of classroom workshops, the project will finish in Draíocht on Saturday 10^th of May, with a Family Day and Exhibition of some of the children’s handmade work including clay face masks, treasure chests and hand-stained and decorated journey scrolls. The families of all 148 children will be invited to Draíocht where the project will be officially closed by Bob Kelly, of RTE’s ‘No Place like Home’.

The entire project is being recorded on DVD by filmmakers Neil Dowling and Paddy Shirley, and each child will receive a copy of the finished film to add to their treasure chest when the project finishes.

Chester Beatty Library, through its education service offers a variety of programmes designed to foster better understanding of its collections.
Draíocht is a multi disciplinary arts centre with a thriving theatre, visual arts and children’s programme, serving the people of Dublin 15 and its environs.

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Additional Project Information:

The 20 nationalities of the children represented in the project are (in alphabetical order): Albanian, Filipino, Indian, Iranian, Irish, Italian, Kazakhstani, Latvian, Lithuanian, Moldovan, Nigerian, Pakistani, Polish, Portugese, Romanian, Saudi Arabian, Slovakian, South African, Sudanese, Zimbabwean.

Working in tandem in the six schools over 6 weeks will be arts practitioners:
Niall de Burca (Storytelling) / John ‘The Explorer’ Mahon (visual arts) / Julie Duane (Storytelling) / Sarah Kernaghan (Visual Arts) / Jenni Cleary (Visual Arts) / Triona Langan (Visual Arts) / Philip Kennedy (Visual Arts) / Thomas O’Connor (Visual Arts) / Seamus Cashman (Poetry & Storytelling) / Neil Dowling (Film Maker) / Paddy Shirley (Film Maker)

 The six primary schools taking part are:

• Mary Mother of Hope (Littlepace) (3^rd Class aged 8-9 years)
• Tyrellstown Educate Together (Tyrellstown) (1^st Class, aged 6-7 years)
• Scoil Bhride Cailini (Blanchardstown) (4^th Class, aged 9-10 years)
• Castleknock Educate Together (Blanchardstown) (6^th Class, aged 11-12 years)
• St Philip the Apostle, Junior School (Mountview) (1^st Class, aged 6-7 years)
• Scoil Mhuire Senior School (Blanchardstown) (5^th Class 10-11 years)

From September to December 2005 six professional writers, Aine Ni Ghlinn, Aislinn O’Loughlin, Mae Leonard, Gina Moxley, Larry O’Loughlin & Seamus Cashman, worked with nine schools from Dublin 15 exploring the world of poetry together and trying their hands at writing their own poems.
When each class and their new mentor finished creating their poem, Draíocht handed them over to four professional illustrators, Alan Clarke, Adrienne Geoghegan, Sarah Kernaghan and Olwyn Whelan, to create a picture for the story of each poem.
The resulting combinations are now permanently displayed in Draíocht as a tribute to the creativity of the children of Dublin 15 and a way of enabling them to permanently make a mark on the Arts Centre.

A list of the poems created and their illustrators are below:


‘Cool Granny’
Created by Gina Moxley with 4th Class at Scoil Olibheir, Blanchardstown.
Illustrated by Adrienne Geoghegan.

‘Running Late’
Created by Mae Leonard with 4th Class at Castleknock Educate Together National School.
Illustrated by Sarah Kernaghan.

‘Timmy’s Little Fall’
Created by Aislinn O’Loughlin with 5th Class at Scoil Bhríde Boys National School, Blanchardstown.
Illustrated by Alan Clarke.

‘The Blakestown Rap’
Created by Larry O’ Loughlin and Seamus Cashman and the Homework Club of Scoil Mhuire Snr National School, Blakestown.
Illustrated by Adrienne Geoghegan.

‘The Wizard’s Choice’
Created by Áine Ní Ghlinn and 5th & 6th Classes at Mulhuddart National School.
Illustrated by Olwyn Whelan.

St Philip’s Poetic Playground
Created by Mae Leonard and 4th Class at St. Philip’s Senior National School, Mountview.
Illustrated by Olwyn Whelan.

‘Farmer Joe’
Created by Aislinn O’Loughlin with 6th Class at Scoil Bhríde Girls National School, Blanchardstown.
Illustrated by Sarah Kernaghan.

‘Yo Ghost’
Created by Gina Moxley and 6th Class at St Francis Xavier Snr National School, Castleknock.
Illustrated by Olwyn Whelan.

‘The Jordan Blues’
Created by Larry O’ Loughlin and Seamus Cashman with 4th Class at Sacred Heart of Jesus National School, Huntstown.
Illustrated by Alan Clarke.