Kilkenny Arts Office Youth Residency Programme – Phase 2
The Youth Residency programme is back with Kilkenny Arts Office’s Artist in Residence Aoife Doherty. Aoife is working with youth groups in the Drum Youth Centre Foróige and Ossory Youth delivering a 6-week Art programme.
This programme aims to engage young people in new ways of making art, including sculpture making, printmaking, magazine collage and bookmaking, taking inspiration from art movements throughout history. The residency programme was developed to create a safe space for young people to explore their creativity and to encourage curiosity. It gives the participants the space to experiment and focus on the process of making rather than the end result. Aoife has designed the programme to enable alternative ways of making using different materials to encourage a fun and playful approaches to creative practices.
The beginning of the programme saw young people engage in making constructions out of cardboard. Considering how we can use recycled materials to create works of art. Does art need to be made out of expensive or inexpensive material? Does this change our perception or value of an artwork? We had a variety of responses, some developing materials into a functional wearable piece, others considered a more sculptural and aesthetic approach, showing the varied expressions and lines of inquiry from the young people.
The young people have also recently engaged in exploring colour and light with collage using tissue paper, and experimenting with combining colour pairs and how light alters the colours, we were fortunate to have a bright sunny day to test this theory under the backdrop of the sun.
Throughout this 6-week residency the young people will engage in artmaking as well as taking a trip to Kilkenny’s Butler Gallery to further enhance their experience and understanding of creative possibilities.
This art programme will continue for 4 more weeks and will continue to explore similar themes to play and engage with creative practices.
