For the past two weeks, weâve been busy installing Re-turning at Void Art Centre – which opens this Saturday, 25 April 2026 from 6-8pm.
âRe-turningâ is a programme and exhibitionary project that reflects our previous exhibition âComposting for the futureâ which introduced our audiences to Voidâs intention to work as a social permaculture organisation, thinking through the principles of Earth Care, Fair Share and People Care đȘ± Drawing on the analogy of composting, âRe-turningâ reflects the motion of earthworms as they burrow through soil, aerating and breathing new life into organic matter. Likewise, the project seeks to bring together timelines, recognising the many hands involved in shaping Voidâs past, present and future.
Join PhD Researcher Ashab Ahmad for a Memory Session on the Orchard Gallery (1978 to 2003), Derryâs first contemporary visual arts space. The event will take place at Void Art Centre on Thursday 28 May 2026, 6-8pm.
This is an opportunity to share your experiences of the gallery over some warm refreshments, as well as to discuss the galleryâs programme and its legacy. Everyone is welcome regardless of whether they remember the Orchard Gallery or simply wish to learn more about its history. Ashab will display photographs, documents, publications, and articles on the Orchard Gallery that have been retrieved from archival material at the Void Art Centre. Participants are encouraged to bring in any items in their own possession that they feel would be relevant to the discussion. Whether you fancy a casual chat with other participants or a more critical consideration of lessons for the current context, this event seeks to stimulate new conversations about the Orchard Gallery within the city.
Counter-mapping the river is a workshop with ecofeminist activist, writer and researcher Vâcenza Cirefice and artist Emily McFarland.
The workshop will focus on counter-mapping methods and during the event, we will work together to collectively gather, walk, observe, listen, collect, discuss and record the River Foyle in Derry city. These gathered materials – sounds, images, drawings and personal reflections – will feed into the cumulative Living River Archive, a poetic and evolving record of evidence and care from the river in response to the potential environmental impact of extractive industries on the water, land, air, and community.
This is a public workshop, with limited spaces, to sign up check out Void’s website derryvoid.com, or the following link:Please note that this event will involve being outside, so appropriate footwear and clothing is suggested for the weather. For access needs, please get in touch with us at cecelia@derryvoid.com.
Weâre keen to support car shares to our events if visiting from out of town or rural areas with limited public transport. If youâre planning on travelling from afar via car, and have space you wish to share with another person, let us know the general location from which youâre travelling, and the space you wish to make available in your vehicle at cecelia@derryvoid.com.
Join us for Communities of Practice, a gathering that invites those working with communities and the public to share experiences, challenges and strategies with one another, encouraging connection across the sector in the North West.
This specific session of Communities of Practice will continue conversations from the first session, which looked at collaboration as a potential site of tension, divergences and resistance. Together, we will continue these open conversations and discuss the ways in which we are seeking long-term, equitable working with communities and artists within engagement practice.
Communities of Practice stems from a session held by curator Elena Lespes Muñoz during her visit to Void in April 2025. The session sought to share experiences of working and collaborating with communities, collectively exploring how both our successes and dynamics of dissonance can be leveraged as opportunities for creative self-reflexivity.
This is a free event. To attend, please register here.
Join Voidâs researcher in residence, Pamela Whitaker, for the final event as part of her residency with us! Garden Like an Artist is a call to cultivate nature like an artist both at home and within your locality. The presentation will feature artists who garden with living art materials. It will explore topics such as the de-colonisation of gardening, gardening out loud, climate change gardening and gardening without a rule book.
The presentation will be followed by a visit to a streetscape garden created by Pamela along the Quays and there will be an opportunity to receive some seeds for autumn planting. Everyone is welcome to share their stories of gardening as creatives making nature happen.
This is a free event and open to all. To attend please register here.
Pamela is an art therapy lecturer at the Belfast School of Art. She is also an artist researcher with the Creative Ireland Urban Food Sanctuary project in County Louth. She supports people to garden as artists making nature at home and in their localities. Pamela’s Void residency proposal encourages the cultivation of home gardens, gardening in neighbourhoods and public homeplaces (such as parks) as artistic endeavours. She is keen to work with local people on these topics and also explore climate change gardening, companion gardening, and the art of home gardening. Pamela invites members of the public to contact her to discuss the project further at p.whitaker@ulster.ac.uk. Her research residency aligns with Voidâs civic engagement ambitions as well as Ulster University’s People, Place and Partnership strategy to promote the co-production of knowledge and projects to enhance civic life. The art of gardening encourages positive mental health and can be a vital act of making that creates both nature and pride of place. Pamela plans to link the research residency to learning and teaching at Belfast School of Art and to co-design opportunities for public engagement at Void Art Centre and within local neighbourhoods. The overall goal of the residency is supporting people to enhance their surroundings with the art of gardening that provides a resource for environmental activism and artistry.
Hosted by Frank Rafferty, Silver Tongued Deviance is an open mic platform event, where performers, writers, poets and musicians are invited to come along and perform.
You are welcome to perform old work, test something new, or try out something experimental. You are also very welcome to attend if you would rather just watch and enjoy.
This is a free event and there is no need to book in advance, just turn up on the night
Hosted by Visual Artist Collective in collaboration with Foyle Pride, this sketchbook meet-up is a relaxed break from the Pride festivities where you can create in a low-pressure environment. We invite all LGBTQIA+ artists to come along to Void Art Centre with their sketchbooks for a cup of tea, a few hours of sketching and a chat with fellow queer creatives in a safe, welcoming space, before the week culminates in the annual parade.
In this public talk, Daniel GodĂnez NivĂłn will share his artistic practice and the methodologies that shape it, including collective dreaming, botanical processes and Indigenous epistemologies. Rooted in the ethics of tequio, a form of communal work, his practice explores the relationship between dreaming and the natural world, asking how the dreams of humans and other beings can illuminate environmental crises and spark collective imagination.
Daniel is currently developing a new commission in partnership with ATLAS Arts and VOID. The talk will offer insight into how dreaming, land and time converge in his work, and how artistic practice can become a gesture of listening and reconnection with place.
This workshop is free and open to all.
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Artist Biography
Daniel GodĂnez NivĂłn (Mexico City, 1985) is a visual artist, educator and independent researcher based in Amsterdam. His practice is grounded in tequioâa form of collective work rooted in Indigenous communities, especially in Oaxaca, Mexicoâshaping a practice that merges social participation, pedagogy, and collective knowledge-making. GodĂnez NivĂłn investigates the ties between dreaming and the natural world, asking how the dreams of humans and other beings can illuminate environmental crises and spark collective imagination.
Hosted by Frank Rafferty, Silver Tongued Deviance is an open mic platform event, where performers, writers, poets and musicians are invited to come along and perform.
You are welcome to perform old work, test something new, or try out something experimental.You are also very welcome to attend if you would rather just watch and enjoy.
