The Elephant in the Room
Draíocht & Paul Curley in Primary Schools
February 2026
February 2026
NEST - A crescendo of creative energy erupting across Dublin 15 with the voices and stories of D15’s young people.
Veronica Coburn, Artistic Director NEST, Kevin Rafter, Arts Council Chair, Minister Catherine Martin, Maureen Kennelly, Director Arts Council, Emer McGowan, Director Draíocht, Felicia Olusanya, NEST Artist.
Today (22 February 2023), the Arts Council announced over €2.6m in funding under their ART:2023 Programme. ART:2023 is a call to artists and arts organisations to create new and exciting work, while reflecting on the themes of the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023.
And Draíocht Blanchardstown is delighted to be successful in our application under this scheme with our newest project NEST for 2023-2024, with an award of €310,000.
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Draíocht is delighted to deliver NEST, a visionary, artistically ambitious project of scale that will see 23 stories inspired by Dublin 15’s children and young people, aged just a few days old to 22 years old, our youngest citizens, brought to life through collaboration with leading multi-disciplinary performance artists - playwrights, theatre makers, spoken word artists, dance artists, and music artists - to produce 23 new contemporary works that map our present through the eyes of our children and young people.
NEST's 23 new pieces of work will be performed in homes and schools across Dublin 15 on March 1st 2024 to peer audiences and families. Then the project will culminate in the Spréacha Soar Festival for Children & Young People, from 11-16 March, when all 23 works will take over Draíocht’s two stages.
Led by Artistic Director, Veronica Coburn, NEST is about citizenship, alongside the idea of home, both individual and collective, a single house, a familial place, a society. It will mark the Decade of Centenaries by exploring the ideals of our origin state, liberty, equality and equity in a contemporary context.
On Saturday 17th February, a newly commissioned NEST Portrait Exhibition of participant children's portraits will open in Draíocht's Ground Floor Gallery, from artists Zsolt Basti, Sahoko Blake, Una Sealy & Dorothy Smith, Curated by Sharon Murphy.
A response space and photographic exhibition will also be created in Draíocht's First Floor Gallery by Artist Liadh Connolly to accompany the NEST Portrait Exhibition.
"What better way to round out The Decade of Centenaries than with an artistic exploration of the ideals of our founding state through the lens of our youngest citizens. This interweaving of art and social politics, the intermingling of artist and citizen, the blurring of lines between art and action is deeply resonant. NEST is about reflection. It is about articulation. It is an artistic declaration about the state of Irish citizenship. And given the wonderful expanse of our collective imagination it is a celebration of our ability to laugh and feel hope and find joy." - Veronica Coburn, Artistic Director, NEST
"Dublin 15 is a brilliantly diverse place, with both the youngest population of any local authority area as well as double the national average of new communities living in it. Draíocht has been proud to serve this area since 2001 through all of our programme elements. We are the only arts centre of its kind with a full-time dedicated Children & Youth Arts Officer and a planned appointment of an EDI Officer. Our acknowledged commitment to supporting artists to create exceptional work, while facilitating the meeting of artist and the public, makes NEST the perfect project for us at this time. We will give voice to our children and young people, give an exciting platform to our artists and by doing so, capture a moment in time that will have resonance for many." - Emer McGowan, Director Draíocht
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NEST is based on HOME THEATRE, an original idea by Marcus Vinicius Faustini (Brazil) and Kerry Kyriacos Michael (UK). Draíocht’s iteration, HOME THEATRE (Ireland), took place in 2018.
NEST is funded by ART: 2023, a Decade of Centenaries Collaboration between The Arts Council and the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.
#DecadeOfCentenaries #Art2023 #NEST #SpreachaSoarFestival
Read more ... Art:2023 ... and ACI Press Release
