By Ciaran Tierney For two dancers who had only ever worked together as part of a larger group in a studio in urban Germany, the prospect of spending a week on a remote Gaeltacht island in the West of Ireland was a completely different challenge. Julie McGovern (Mayo) and...
By Ciaran Tierney The opportunity to spend a month on a small island where Irish is very much a living language has been both a transformative and productive experience for circus artist Darragh McLoughlin. As he returns to Berlin, where he is normally based, Darragh says that he will harbour fond memories from Inis Oirr...
by Ciaran Tierney For a man who has spent all of his life living and working in cities, spending three weeks on beautiful Inis Oirr has been both a challenge and a golden opportunity for cartoonist Aongus Collins. Aongus was chosen as the 2022 Galway Cartoon Festival Artist in Residence and loved his time...
By Ciaran Tierney Visual artist Sian Costello admits that she had “a bit of a breakdown” the first day she arrived at Áras Éanna courtesy of a one month residency in partnership with the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) this summer. Suddenly, after leaving her “normal” life in Limerick City behind, the young County Roscommon native...
By Ciaran Tierney Surrendering to the power of nature and making the most of an opportunity to connect with her own ancestors ensured that a recent one-month residency at Áras Éanna became a transformative experience for Irish-American artist Maureen Fleming. Maureen returned to Inis Oirr thanks to a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation in New...
By Ciaran Tierney Exploring the striking landscape of Inis Oirr during the quiet and dark winter months provided huge inspiration to Connemara-based artist Clare Cashman during a recent six week residency at Áras Éanna. Clare came to the smallest of the Aran Islands thanks to a partnership with Ealaín na Gaeltachta and says she...
For Patrick O’Laoighre, writer and musician, a month on Inis Oirr has been a joyous re-awakening. His month long residency at Áras Éanna has seen Patrick tune into the spectacular sounds all around the island, including the language of the people. Stunned by the rocks, the fields, the waves crashing against the cliffs at Inis...
It was the kind of magic which seems to just happen on Inis Oirr. On a cold Tuesday night in October, a musician approached two acrobats in Tigh Ned, the island’s famous music pub. He had seen acrobatic performers Ali Stanger and Henrik Gard perform some sensational moves on the beach earlier in the day...
A month-long residency at Áras Éanna at the start of the summer provided the catalyst for director Sara Jane Scaife to come up with the incredible Irish-language version of ‘Happy Days’ by Samuel Beckett which proved to be such a huge hit at last month’s Galway International Arts Festival. And now Sarah Jane and Company...
