learning labs explore issues of

• socially engaged practice
• social change
• place and displacement
• socially engaged practice

together with the value of

• the arts
• culture
• the arts

as a democratic right

The programme will begin with a keynote address, followed by a panel discussion in addition to live case studies, collective reflection, and opportunities for networking.

Image credit: MAC

The Learning Lab Incubator was structured as a pilot programme of 5 in situ sessions in addition to online conversations (see below for the full timetable).  We commissioned the artist, Kate O’Shea, to critically document in the form of a living archive the collective and collaborative research process.

Several frameworks and questions initially guide this programme:

• What does reconciliation mean?
• How does reparation and transitional justice work in practice?
• How can SEA methods, which are relational by nature, document and amplify the complex histories of communities?
• How can SEA projects collaboratively foster civic and social infrastructure in communities facing displacement, housing issues, or post-conflict challenges?
• What role does the socially engaged artist play in this process?
• What might a cross-border collaboration in the form of a public art commission look like and feel?

Keywords: Reconciliation, Commemoration, Power, Relationality, Community, Neighbourhood, Post-Conflict, Trauma, Ecosystem, Extraction, Place, Reparation, Public, Scale, Regeneration, Transitional Justice, Restorative Justice, Grief, Memory, Legacy, Narrative, Reimagine, Storytelling, Reciprocity, Healing, Heritage, Responsibility, Truth-Telling, Memory, Forgetting, Repair, Mediation, Regeneration, Rights, History. Loss, Home, Archive.

Image credit: Kate O'Shea

‘Create Syria is a programme (2015-2023) dedicated to enhancing artists’ capabilities to contribute to the development of more resilient and unified communities. It achieves this by facilitating community art projects that prioritize experiential depth and artistic excellence’.

Create Syria: A Space to Explore Arts and Social Change. Questions Around Social Arts Practices in a (Dis)Connected World (2026)

Image credit: Ettijahat Independent Culture

Prints, books, zines, posters, fabrics and other memorabilia filled the school space with a sense of calculated chaos. From that moment, I understood O’Shea’s practice as spanning and circling a full 360-degrees. Her work resembling a ‘living archive’ in the way Stuart Hall first coined the term when reflecting on the challenges of documenting the Black and Asian artist diaspora:

Kate O’Shea’s exhibition, Mycelium, runs from 20 May – 26 August 2026 at Visual, County Carlow – Ireland.