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Reach'25 Festival

Reach '25: Arts Power

Join us for an excellent schedule of sustainability talks focusing on what the arts and cultural sectors are doing to reach and engage more people on sustainability issues.

Date(s)
April 4, 2025
Location
Seamus Heaney Centre (Wolfson Lecture Theatre)
Time
09:30 - 15:45
Price
FREE tickets available

09.00

Registration, tea and coffee

09.20

Welcome

Session 1: MAKING AN IMPACT

09.30

“Harnessing Arts, Culture & Creativity for Community Engagement on Climate Action: Insights from the Creative Climate Action Programme"

Professor Marguerite Nyhan – Professor of Engineering for Sustainability at University College Cork; Research Affiliate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

09.50

“What Should This City Do? A Brink! year of culture, climate & heritage in the city centre”

Gawain Morrison, Brink! 

10.10

“Visualising Northern Ireland’s Natural Heritage”

Toby Smith, Director of Development at Belfast Photo Festival

 

10.30

Panel Discussion: “Arts Impact” – with Marguerite Nyhan, Gawain Morrison, Toby Smith and Michael Alcorn

10.45

Tea / Coffee

 

Session 2: ARTISTS’ PERSPECTIVES ON SUSTAINABILITY

11.10

“Memories of Repair and Traces of Habitation”
Ola Hassanain, featured artist at the Naughton Gallery

11.30

“Stories from the Wildland-Urban Interface: narrative image making and ecological disruption”
Aidan Koch, featured artist at the Naughton Gallery

11.50

“ART+STEM In The Fight Against Climate Change”

Ingrid Hess, UMass Lowell, and visiting artist to Reach

12.10

Panel Discussion: “Action on sustainability through visual culture”
Ola Hassanain, Aidan Koch, Ingrid Hess and Ben Crothers

 

 

12.30

Lunch

13.15

“Shrine to Falling Microbes”
Capture Studio, University Mews

Artists, Misha Rabinovich and Caitlin Foley present Shrine to Falling Microbes a 3d virtual environment, generative animation, and website to pay homage to microbes that have been depleted or disappeared.

Misha Rabinovich and Caitlin Foley
UMass Lowell

 

Tickets for this event are booked separately through our sustainability events page. 

 

Afternoon session resumes in the Seamus Heaney Centre

 

14.15

“Jump the Hedges”

Síofra Caherty, designer and founder of Jump the Hedges.

14.35

“Natural Histories, Natural Futures: Critical-Creative Methodologies for Climate Arts, Advocacy, and Education”

M.K. Foster, Fulbright-Queen's University Belfast Scholar Award (Creative Writing)

14.55

 

Embedding sustainability in the curriculum at Munster Technological University”

Professor Alistair Payne
Dean of the Faculty of Creative and Performing Arts and Media, MTU

15.15

Panel Discussion: “Good practice and innovative approaches – embedding Sustainability in the arts and humanities curricula”.  
M.K. Foster, Ingrid Hess, Alistair Payne and John Barimo (SDSN Ireland)

15.45

Closing remarks