Penguins, Monsters and a Wicked Fairy
Dance Workshops in D15 Early Years Settings & Primary Schools
7-25 October 2024
7-25 October 2024
"Why do we tell stories? To connect. Spend time together. Telling stories is a communal imagining. It is a dreaming. Stories carve out a space where we can face our fears, look back and understand what has happened to us and dare to imagine a future that we do not as yet know. Stories allow us to come to terms with what we fear might happen and stories allow us to be bold and hopeful and optimistic and imagine how things might be wonderful in the years and decades to come. Plays, spoken word, songs, dance, three dimensional stories shared live in the glorious ritual of theatre. It’s time to listen to our children and young people so that we can come to terms with what we have done through the lens of how they see their future." - Veronica Coburn, Artistic Director NEST
NEST is an artistically ambitious project of scale, that will see stories inspired by Dublin 15’s children and young people, aged just days old to 22 years old, our youngest citizens, brought to life through collaboration with 23 leading multi-disciplinary artists - playwrights, theatre makers, spoken word artists, dance artists, and music artists – tasked with producing new contemporary works that map our present through the eyes of our children and young people.
Artistic Director of NEST Veronica Coburn facilitated hundreds of workshops with thousands of children during 2023, before making a final representative selection, that maps Dublin 15, from Ongar to Castleknock, and Mulhuddart to Tyrrelstown.
NEST launches on Saturday, February 17th, 2024 when everyone meets for the first time, Artists and Participants. The days following will be filled with conversations and laughter, swooping and soaring, turning and diving, a murmuration of ideas and fun, what ifs and have you ever thought abouts, tell us what you think about, worry about, dream about, as Draíocht’s artists spend time in the community with their participants, crafting new worlds in words and music, in the reach and fall of an arm, or the gentle turn of a head.
NEST's new pieces of work will first be performed in homes and schools across Dublin 15, on the 1st of March 2024 to the children’s peer audiences. Then the shows return to Draíocht for one week, 11-16 March 2024 as part of the much anticipated Spréacha Soar Festival for Children & Young People, when the public and wider community can enjoy these new creations.
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NEST HOSTS: D15 CHILDREN & GROUPS
Emily (Born 01 Jan 2024 & pictured above) | Cameron (3) | Liam (4) | Seímí (5) | Cillian (7) | Ben & Jacob (Brothers aged 7 & 9) | Abbie (8) | Kacey (8) | Exaucee & Destinee (Twins aged 9) | Nilas (10) | Adam (10) | Patrick (11) | Ruby (11) | Khadija (13) | Rang Eanna, Coláiste Pobail Setanta (22 2nd years aged 13-14) | Alannah (15) | Ameerat (15) | Ajla (16) | Grace (17) | Divine (17) | Amukela (18) | Lee (18), Penny (18) & Danila (20) from TUD | Rebecca (22).
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"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. 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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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.
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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
