Open Day 2026

Indigo & Cloth is an independent menswear and lifestyle store with an integrated café in Temple Bar, Dublin, known for its focus on quality, design, and community. Alongside a carefully curated retail offering, the café serves specialty coffee with an emphasis on seasonality, precision, and hospitality. 

Food Baby is a Dublin-based food brand specialising in Afro-fusion cuisine, soul food, meal prep and handcrafted desserts, founded by Millicent Awolowo.

Inspired by the way food connects people across cultures and passionate about bringing people together through food, Millicent creates dishes that combine bold flavours, comfort and creativity while delivering restaurant-like quality experiences. Through Food Baby she curates memorable food experiences that celebrate culture, community and great flavour. 

Woman in STEM is a self-proclaimed recovering creative. She organises quarterly check ins and end of year reviews, to pose the question have you put in enough sweat and tears to hit your clubbing KPIs this year? Committed to helping you hit your EDM targets by EOD, Woman in STEM is what happens when you cross your LinkedIn homepage with your NSFW brain rot pop playlist. 

Through expressive performance interpreting, Sarah-Jane brings songs to life visually — allowing audiences, regardless of hearing levels, to see the words, feel the emotions, and experience music in a different way. Her interactive performances also teach audiences Irish Sign Language, turning participation into part of the show itself. 

Fearghal has an interest in multi-disciplinary work which includes opera, theatre, dance, movement, and audio.  

Most recent opera highlights include his most recent work with Irish National Opera in Rusalka, The Flying Dutchman and La Boheme. 

Other opera and theatre highlights include ensemble for Michael Gallen’s new opera Elsewhere with Straymaker, which premiered at the Abbey Theatre, the Tenor Soloist in John Scott’s The Wanderer for Irish Modern Dance Theatre Company at The Cork Opera House, Singer/dancer for the Germany and American tour of The World of Musicals with GFD Productions, The Magic Flute (1st Armed Man/Chorus), Orfeo ed Euridice (Ensemble), The Second Violinist (Chorus), Tales of Hoffmann (Spalanzani/ Chorus), Eithne (Taoiseach/Chorus), Acis and Galatea (Acis/Ensemble), Orpheus and the Underworld (Orpheus/Mercury), The Turn of the Screw (Prologue and u/s Quint), Pygmalion (Pygmalion), La Rondine (Prunier), L’Orfeo (Apollo/Shepherd/Spirit), Gondoliers (Marco), Der Vampr (Georg), Cox and Box (Box), amongst others.  

Fearghal launched his first podcast series Let’s Talk About The Arts in 2020, which is a safe space to uplift and support the arts industry and artists through important and open conversations. He has also produced and worked on many Irish podcast productions.  

In 2022, Fearghal launched his own Cabaret evening, The Curtis Cabaret at The Sugar Club, Dublin to great success. Since its launch, The Curtis Cabaret has returned to The Sugar Club on multiple occasions for various themed evenings, the most recent being Queerly, Madly, Deeplyl celebrating queer identity. 

He is a celebrant and solemniser with Entheos Ireland, and is known for his personal, fun and meaningful ceremonies for weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies.  

He was named one of the Top 50 People to Watch for 2023 by Irish journalist Andrea Cleary for The Irish Times. 

Alessandra Azeviche is a Dublin-based, Bahia-born dance artist and a leading Afro-Brazilian voice, connecting ancestral movements to contemporary performance. A board member of Dublin Dance Festival and Associate Artist at Project Arts Centre, she is also the Founder of the multicultural community Quilombo Terra (2023). Her acclaimed solo debut, ‘Terra’, was nominated for two Dublin Fringe Festival awards, and her work explores themes of counter-colonization and intersectionality.

Emma O Grady is a multidisciplinary neurodivergent artist – The natural world, folklore, Access.

Ailbhe O’Connor is an Artist, gardener and forager.

Credits while studying at the Lir include: The Duchess of Berwick Lady Windermere’s Fan, Paulina A Winter’s Tale, Vera in Bulrusher, Delphine in Untitled and Sarah Worth in The Sugar Wife. 

Previous to training: performed and directed for Missoula Children’s Theatre touring internationally. 

Other roles include Ronette in Little Shop of Horrors, Rusty in Footloose at theStrand Theatre in Marietta, Georgia and Deloris Van Cartier in Sister Act at theMissoula Community Theatre in Missoula, Montana . 

Upon Graduating: Gate stage in Roddy Doyle Adaptation of J.M Barrie’s Peter Pan.She went on to play Sarah Worth in the Sugar Wife at the Abbey National Theatre,Elena/Rita in The Jesus Trilogy adapted by Eoghan Quinn, Erica in Beards the Musical written by HK Ni Shriordan, Mom/Tierra in The Queer Messiah River Bank Arts/ National Theatre Writers’ Studio, Tituba The Crucible Gaiety Theatre. 

Sementes do Samba de Roda is an Afro-diasporic movement that emerges as both resistance and renewal:a reclaiming of the ancestral practices of Black Brazilian communities. It is a song carried in the body, a dance that remembers.

Born on Irish soil, this project seeks to reconnect participants with their roots while fostering collective resistance through movement, rhythm, and shared experience. It nurtures the Axé (the vital life force) within each of us. Through the work of Núcleo Cultural Sementes do Cerrado, we honor the depth and diversity of Brazilian culture by sharing Samba de Roda and other traditional rhythms with care, respect, and love.

Sementes do Cerrado’s mission is to create an inclusive and welcoming space where people can gather, learn, and exchange experiences. This project is an artistic and cultural gesture of reverence to the generations who shaped Brazil, and an invitation to collectively embody and celebrate their living legacy.

Tamilore Rivera-Clinton is a poet and storyteller based in Dublin, Ireland. She describes her writing as investigative poetry into the many meanings of being. She has performed and published her poetry globally and enjoys reading while sipping a cup of tea. 

Bridget Kabouet is an Irish-Ivorian poet based on the northside of Dublin. Her work explores themes of humanity, spirituality, trauma, and love. She has a deep appreciation for independent zines and writes with a focus on the Black, women, and LGBTQ+ communities. Her poetry can be found on Instagram at @crybabypxet. 

D’Girlos exists for those who were never given the chances they deserved. It’s for the ones who were overlooked, underestimated, or told they didn’t belong. This is your space, your stage, your moment. It’s a chance to take the girl in the juicy tracksuit seriously. D’Girlos made their debut at Dublin Fringe Festival 2025 with That’s Sooo Povo, a sold-out production nominated for both Best Production and the Solas Nua New Voices Award. The show also earned Trudy Nolan the Next Stage Fringe Wildcard Award. 

Trudy Nolan, from Tallaght, is an actor and theatre maker with a focus on immersive theatre, movement, and socially engaged performance. A first-class honours graduate of TU Dublin’s BA Drama (Performance), she was also a 2025 Dublin Theatre Festival Next Stage participant and Axis Assemble Bursary recipient. 

Sophie O’Toole, from Crumlin, is an actor, writer, and theatre maker. A graduate of the TUD Conservatoire and an Axis Assemble Artist 2024, her work explores class, identity, and access within the arts. Alongside theatre-making, she has a strong interest in filmmaking, experimental storytelling, and drag performance. 

Recent highlights include the publication of his memoir notes on love and desire (2026), a lead role in the short Irish language short film Idir Dhá Thrá, directed by Carson Honor (2026), a performative reading from his memoir as part of Parallels (Carnegie Library, Dun Laoghaire, 2026), and performing in Mark O’Halloran’s two-hander Trade (Samuel Beckett Theatre, 2024). His solo dance piece, Dance Alone (NCAD Gallery, 2021), was selected by Pallas Studios’ Periodical Review as one of the significant art works of 2021. In 2014, for his solo play, An Insignificant Man, he received a Best Performer Nomination at the Dublin Fringe Festival. As Smilin’ Kanker, he was crowned Alternative Miss Ireland in 2009. He has presented work at IMMA, RHA, Temple Bar Galleries, Project Arts Centre, the Olympia Theatre, Smock Alley, Electric Picnic, Workmans Club, Sugar Club and throughout the UK (including the National Theatre, London), New York, Amsterdam and Teramo, Italy. 

Louis’ work explores seed saving, environmental commons, and participatory forms of knowledge-sharing. Through workshops, publications, and installations, he engages publics in rethinking relationships with land, food, and collective care.

Liliana Zeic

Liliana Zeic (Piskorska) (she/her they/them) – born in Poland in 1988, visual artist, PhD in fine arts. She is a finalist of the Forecast Forum in Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2017 and the Audience Award Winner: Views 2019 in Zachęta National Gallery of Art. She has taken part in over 140 individual and group exhibitions in Poland and abroad.  Her works are part of private and public collections (incl. NOMUS New Museum of Art, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Wrocław Contemporary Museum, Municipal Gallery Arsenal, MS Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź). Based in Warsaw. She creates under the name Zeic since February 2021.  Represented by gallery lokal 30.

Pola Folwarczny

Originally from Poland, Pola is an early-career creative professional, growing her practice in visual arts curation and event development. She is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Cultural Policy and Arts Management at University College Dublin. She also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Arts and Sciences from the University of Amsterdam. Having just finished her internship at the Project Arts Centre, during which she assisted with the opening of Eating the Sun, she is excited to bring you all on a tour of Liliana’s astonishing work.

NeuroGamers Ireland, formed in 2023, is an unincorporated association that provides a safe, inclusive space for people with ADHD, Autism, Dyslexia etc to play board games and meet people. Through bi-weekly meet ups they hope to open up the world of board gaming to people, whether this is through showing them different genres of games or putting a different spin on something they have liked previously. They also promote game publishers and designers who you might not see at other board game meet ups. 

Presented as both a printed publication and a digital archive accessed through QR codes, the project creates a space where personal histories can be shared, preserved, and celebrated. At its heart, The Queer Archive is an act of collective storytelling – honouring identity, belonging, and the importance of documenting our lives in our own words for future generations.

Director : Jessie Thompson

Director of photography  & Editor: Luca Truffarelli

Choreography: Jessie Thompson

Produced by : Jessie Thompson and Luca Truffarelli

Assistants: Mia Burke and Fintan Ashe Bowden

Sound Design: Jack Foster

This Film is proudly supported by Arts Council Ireland, Dublin City Council, Project arts Centre.

Jessie Thompson is a Dublin-based dance artist, choreographer, performer, and curator whose work bridges hip-hop and contemporary dance across theatre, film, live music, and non-traditional performance spaces. Her practice explores rhythm, physicality, collective energy, and collaboration through multidisciplinary performance and community engagement.

Jessie’s choreographic works include CRAWLER, AUTOMATA: A Myth Reawakened, The Floor Is Yours, BENCH, Missing You, Missing Me, and Dance Music for the Apocalypse. Her work has been presented nationally and internationally at venues and festivals including Dublin Dance Festival, Edinburgh Fringe, Light Moves Festival, What Next Festival, and Nuit Blanche Paris.

She is currently supported by the Arts Council of Ireland through the Dance Artist in Residence Award 2026/27 and is a Project Artist at Project Arts Centre.

Louise Bruton is an arts journalist, writer, DJ and disability rights activist. Let Go is her directing debut, a story inspired by her love of pop culture and her experience of being a disabled teenager. She made her theatre debut in 2017’s Dublin Fringe Festival with a sold-out run of Why Won’t You Have Sex With Me? She is currently working on a non-fiction book with support from the Arts Council. 

Fatoumata Gandega is a writer, filmmaker, curator, and artist based in Dublin. Her practice addresses identity, displacement, and belonging themes, centering voices from diasporic, Muslim, and Black communities. She employs a collaborative and participatory approach with groups to co-create work that reflects their authentic experiences. Inspired by interdisciplinary approaches, Gandega integrates visual arts, film, cultural archives, and oral histories to challenge dominant narratives and reimagine the possibilities of representation. Her approach is rooted in storytelling, using narrative to explore questions of social justice, inequality, and resilience. 

Her work has screened and exhibited at the Dublin International Film Festival, Catalyst IFF, the Irish Film Institute, Rua Red, Sirius Art Centre, and abroad in Paris and Brussels. 

Waju is a Nigerian-born photographer and emerging filmmaker based in Dublin, Ireland. With a visual practice shaped behind the lens and a performance background rooted in stage productions in Ukraine, he brings a distinctive, multi-disciplinary sensibility to his storytelling. 

Now making his debut in film, Waju draws on years of photographic experience to craft images with intention and depth. His journey — spanning Nigeria, Ukraine, and Ireland — informs a perspective that is both globally shaped and intimately personal. His first short film marks the beginning of a new creative chapter, one he stepped into with the conviction that there is no better time than now. 

Venus Patel is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist working across film, visual arts, and theatre. Her work proposes the deconstruction of boundaries and unleashing hidden and erased histories. She relies on the absurd, the fantastical, and the monstrous to create speculative realities for Queer/POC liberation. Her work has exhibited across Ireland and her films have screen in festivals internationally.