Join us for a new Summer Camp!

For ages: 8-11 years and 12-16 years.

Five full days of creativity, fun, performance and art in VISUAL and the George Bernard Shaw Theatre. Experience drama and visual art with our professional arts facilitators. This is an opportunity to make, mess and meet new people. The week will end with a public sharing of the theatre and artwork made during the Imagining Worlds summer camp at VISUAL, so friends and family can join us in celebrating each participant's creativity.

We will explore the summer season of artworks at VISUAL through curious eyes together, sharing what you think the story is and wondering why and how the artists made what they made. The exhibitions will include flags, paintings, sculptures, monuments and costumes. These will form the backdrop to your theatre playmaking and experimenting with art materials as you imagine new worlds together. You will learn new art techniques, practice connecting ideas together, grow confidence in storytelling, develop stage skills and collaborate with other creative young people!

The Imagining Worlds summer camp will be fully supervised by the team at VISUAL. Participants will be grouped according to age, (8-12yrs and 12+years). Each day will be divided into morning and afternoon theatre and art sessions with a break for a packed lunch.

Numbers are limited so please book your place to avoid disappointment.

Facilitators are professional artists and theatre makers:

Mary Jo Gilligan is an artist and facilitator at VISUAL. She studied sculpture through a Fine Art BA at NCAD and holds an MA in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes University. She is very interested in the values we hold and that shape us, how imagination is both a huge inner space and a superpower for creative action in the world and how we tune into each other and our built and natural environments. She increasingly puts her creative energy into workshops and other learning contexts to explore art making and imagination with other people.

Anna Galligan has worked as a professional actress, drama facilitator, theatre director, and performance arts teacher for over 30 years. She has designed and delivered numerous arts and theatre facilitation training programmes and has acted as an arts programme consultant in a variety of settings including youth theatre, mental health services, formal education, and law.

Anna worked at Youth Theatre Ireland for ten years where she introduced various long term programmes such as ArtsTrain, a full-time drama facilitation programme, ‘Leading On…’, an annual training programme for youth theatre leaders and ‘The Young Critic’s Programme’ as well as developing various supports in terms of best practice and policy in youth theatre. For the following 13 years, she was Director of Participation and Education at Barnstorm Theatre Company, where she ran Kilkenny Youth Theatre as part of her work. Anna currently runs Carlow Youth Theatre and teaches Performance Craft and Drama Studies at Carlow Institute of Further Education and Training, lectures in various institutions in creativity, drama and performance and delivers youth drama facilitation training with Crooked House Theatre Company... and she loves to play!