Monsters - Dance in Schools Tour
On Tour November 2025
D15 Primary Schools
D15 Primary Schools
November 2017 - February 2018
HOMESPUN was the culmination of a spoken word and poetry project which sought to celebrate and give a public platform to the voices and experiences of young people who call Dublin 15 home.
We have one of the largest populations of young people in the country for whom Dublin 15 is not the place of their birth, or their parents birth. There are children from Cork, from Warsaw, from Tokyo, there are children who live in apartments, houses, even hotels. There are young people, for whom their friends mean Home and for others, Home can only ever be where their family is. Home can be when you have beans on toast, it can be your diary, or where your granny is, it can be in the car, or in your earphones.
Beginning with explorative workshops and events in Mulhuddart Community Centre and with D15 Youth Theatre in Winter 2017, Poet Colm Keegan began to talk about and explore the notion of Home. Over January 2018, he worked more intensely with groups, in schools, with youth groups, through an intergenerational workshop in a nursing home, facilitating and collecting spoken word poems and writings across Dublin 15, with the same question, what does Home mean?
In February Colm began to collaborate with contemporary visual artist Michael McLoughlin and a small group of young people. Inspired by the words, poetry and stories created by participants in Colm’s workshops, this young group was introduced to the concepts of contemporary art and new media and presented with the challenge of how to transform an arts practice that is at its heart performance, onto the white walls of Draíocht’s First Floor Gallery. Facilitated by Michael, the group began to create soundscapes and film that interpreted the thoughts, ideas and reality of the words of the original project participants.
The resulting exhibition was an exploration of sound and contemporary arts practice informed by a collaboration between Michael McLoughlin, Colm Keegan and young people and children of Dublin 15.
The exhibition ran in tandem with our HOME THEATRE IRELAND project and was accompanied by a live public performance evening in Draíocht’s Main Auditorium on the opening night. A short film documentary and publication featuring some of the participants work was available through Draíocht’s box office.
