Community Collaborations - Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker

The Gallery is very happy to be collaborating with a number of different communities for a diverse range of projects celebrating Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker. We look forward to sharing more about this collaborations during the run of the exhibition. 

The Pockets Project

As part of our community programme celebrating the exhibition, the Gallery is delighted to collaborate with Galway Roscommon Education & Training Board, Galway Rural Development, Galway Traveller Movement, and community artist and educator, Helen Monaghan on The Pockets Project.

This project is rooted in creative sewing and explores the historical textiles of Lavinia Fontana’s renaissance world. Saccoccia were a tie-on pocket worn by women in sixteenth-century Italy and are amongst the earliest examples of this decorative and useful item of clothing. Similar traditions can also be seen in the Traveller Community’s custom of making and wearing beady pockets.

Taking place in two centres in Ballygar and Athenry, Co. Galway, The Pockets Project is a unique blend of art historical learning, practical and sustainable sewing techniques and community work. Participating groups, including women from both Traveller and settled communities, will gain new sewing skills while reviving old traditions; learn about the life and work of Lavinia Fontana, as well as the traditional techniques and customs of the Traveller heritage of beady pockets.

The Pockets Project will be displayed in the window of the Gallery Shop from until 27 August 2023. Read more about it here. 
 

Cultural Art Therapy in the Community 

Lavinia Fontana was an artist of breathtaking skill. She was also a daughter, sister, wife, mother; a teacher and a friend; a businesswoman and a risk taker; a strategist and a confidante. While her achievements are remarkable, and her career quite unique even by contemporary standards, core aspects of Fontana’s life in sixteenth century Bologna still profoundly resonate with the lives of women today.  As such, this exhibition offers a unique opportunity to go beyond the artworks and the walls, and explore the critically important, cultural issues of women’s rights, female empowerment and gender inequality in Ireland. 

Inspired by Fontana’s life and work, drawing on emerging research on arts, health and society, and foregrounding the civic responsibility of museums, the resulting project, Cultural Art Therapy in the Community is a new departure for museum education in Ireland. Made possible by the generous support of Bank of America, the project centres on the therapeutic role that art, and by extension gallery spaces, can play in affirming peoples lived experiences. In this instance specifically, the project will support the needs of women and children experiencing domestic violence, across three key sites: in crisis accommodation refuges, in community centres, and at the Gallery. 

To realise the project ambitions, we are proud to partner with Art Therapist Andrea Plunkett (IACAT member), and a select number of women’s refuges and community spaces across the Greater Dublin Area. Through this programme, we aim to establish a relevant, sustainable framework for supporting women and children through art and art therapy, extend our capacity to go beyond the walls of the Gallery, and expand our ongoing research in art education, museology, health and related fields. 

Cultural Art Therapy in the Community is devised by Brina Casey, Education Officer for Community, Access & Health, with Sinéad Rice, Head of Education and Andrea Plunkett, Art Therapist. 

Read more about this project here.

Aosóg Multigenerational Project

Since 2018, the Gallery has been proud to work with and support Aosóg, a community-based child and family project based in the Northwest Inner City of Dublin. This inclusive and holistic programme works directly with parents and guardians to support the wellbeing and safety of children aged 7 to 12 years. 

For this multigenerational project, artist Bethan Parkes will work creatively with both children and parent/guardian groups, to explore some of the rich themes emerging from Lavinia Fontana’s life and work and consider how the sixteenth-century artist may relate to their twenty-first century experiences. Through practical experimentation and creative investigation, the project will activate the imaginations and talents of this community of learners. 
 

Lavinia Fontana: Trailblazer, Rule Breaker is proudly supported by Bank of America, Exhibition Partner.

The Gallery would like to thank the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media for their ongoing support.