Karen Aguiar worked with the students at Holy Family School for the Deaf from May-July 2025
Holy Family School for the Deaf
Lianne Quigley in Collaboration with dancers Jessie Thompson, Matt Szczerek and Favour Odusola, ran 5 weeks of introductory dance workshops at Holy Family School for the Deaf in April and May 2024.
Karen Aguiar is a socially engaged artist, performer and producer who believes in the transformative power of dance to unite people and nurture collective spaces. As the founder and creative director of Go Dance For Change, a platform for intercultural collaboration, Karen envisions dance as a means of meaningful integration, individual growth, and collective action.
She has been dancing, building community and producing dance & performance in Ireland since 2018. She is a recipient of the Artist in the Community Scheme Bursary Award: Collaborative Arts and Dance funded by the Irish Arts Council, managed by Create in partnership with Dance Ireland; and the Creative Places Artistic Residency by Creative Ireland and Wicklow County Council 2025.
Karen performed with Macnas at the Science Week and at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade Dublin for “Turas Alf”. She was also invited by President Michael D. Higgins and Sabina Higgins to the reception ‘Samhlaíocht agus an Náisiún – Imagination and the Nation’, celebrating the contribution of Community Arts to Inclusion and Creativity to mark St Patrick’s Day at Áras an Uachtaráin 2025.
With a postgraduate study in Art & Ecology at NCAD and a former dance residency at Rua Red South Dublin Arts Centre, Karen’s movement practice incorporates embodied ecologies and knowledge, activism, culture, and play.
Lianne Quigley in Collaboration with dancers Jessie Thompson, Matt Szczerek and Favour Odusola, ran 5 weeks of introductory dance workshops at Holy Family School for the Deaf in April and May 2024.
This work is part of a broader piece of work funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Grant. The aim of the project is to establish a meaningful partnership between Project Arts Centre and the Deaf community; to raise visibility and awareness, and encourage crucial dialogue around the barriers for Deaf people engaging in the arts and cultural sector; to promote new ideas and create practical change through training, artistic support, ongoing engagement with the wider Deaf community and the presentation of ambitious new work by and for Deaf artists and audiences.
As part of the residency the school were invited to a tour of Distinct, the exhibition as part of Disrupt Disability Arts Festival at Project Arts Centre, as well as a talk by the Festival’s Director Alan James Byrnes and tour of the building.
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