Event Category: Workshops

Workshop: Lullaby for a Dreaming Wall

Developed by Daniel Godínez Nivón as part of the research for Void’s upcoming exhibition The Breathing Stone, this workshop invites participants to walk along Derry’s historic walls and discover the hidden stories of the medicinal plants, fossilised sea creatures embedded in the stone, and the delicate ecosystem they sustain together. Throughout the event, together we will ask:

If dreaming is an experience shared by all living beings, what might the plants and stones of Derry’s walls dream of? Can dreams become a shared space of knowledge through which we perceive our surroundings differently?

Through attentive walking, conversation and drawing, we will explore dreams as a shared territory where humans, plants, stones and other living beings may encounter one another. Rather than understanding dreams as something exclusively human, the workshop proposes dreaming as an ecological space that can cultivate tenderness, care and new ways of relating to our environment.

Open to everyone, the workshop combines a guided walk along Derry’s walls followed by a collective drawing session at the Playhouse. Together we will reflect on the invisible relationships that sustain the living wall and imagine other ways of listening to the landscapes that surround us.

ℹ️ This workshop will take place at The Playhouse, 5-7 Artillery Street, Derry, BT48 6RG. There will be moments of walking, and so, we suggest wearing approproiate footwear. If you have access requirements, please email cecelia@derryvoid.com

Dreaming Disability Futures with Alex Cregan | Bounce 2025

Dreaming Disability Futures is a dreaming workshop convened by Derry-based writer Alex Cregan at Void Art Centre on occasion of Bounce 2025. The workshop seeks to make visible the importance of care webs and solidarity within disabled communities, particularily in the North West of Ireland, through discussion and creative dialogue. The event takes place on Saturday 4 October 2025, from midday-4pm, with a break from 1.30pm-2.15pm. 

With an interest in care and communal solutions, Alex will facilitate a two-part workshop. The workshop will begin with a reading and subsequent dialogue around access and collective liberation across intersectional identities, and what it means to centre this in everyday life, as well as in institutional policy-making. We will follow this with a free writing session that dreams up a future where no one is left behind, as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha highlights in the book ‘Care Work’, a future in which ‘every body and mind is known as beautiful’.

Whilst the session involves writing, we welcome those who are keen to express their ideas in other creative formats– from drawing to soundmaking. You are welcome to engage in the session in a way that feels most comfortable for you.

To register to attend the workshop, please check out University of Atypical’s website here: https://universityofatypical.org/bounce-2025/dreaming-disability-futures/ To take part in the workshop University of Atypical are charging a £5 fee, and alsao have a number of bursaries available. 

ℹ️ If you have any questions, please contact hello@derryvoid.com. For access needs, you can send us an email or send across a voice message if this works best for you. 

Counter-mapping the river with Emily McFarland and V’cenza Cirefice

Sunday 19 October 2025, from 2-4pm 

Meeting at Void Art Centre before walking outside

Free registration here.

Counter-mapping the river is a workshop with ecofeminist activist, writer and researcher V’cenza 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.

Supported by Good Relations Week Fund via DCSDC.

Free registration here.

 

🚙 Beep Beep! Car Sharing 

We’re keen to support car shares to our events if visiting from out of town or rural areas with limited public transport. If you’re 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 you’re travelling, and the space you wish to make available in your vehicle at cecelia@derryvoid.com.

Communities of Practice

Wednesday 10th September, 1pm – 2.30pm, Void Art Centre

To attend, please register here.

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.

For further information please contact cecelia@derryvoid.com

Garden Like an Artist, a workshop and presentation with Pamela Whitaker

Saturday 30th August, 11am – Midday, Void Art Centre

To attend please register here.

Join Void’s 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.

For more information please contact: hello@derryvoid.com

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Pamela Whitaker

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 Void’s 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.

Daniel Godínez Nivón – Artist Talk

5.00 – 7.00pm, Void Art Centre

In this public talk, Daniel Godínez Nivón 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 Godínez Nivón (Mexico City, 1985) is a visual artist, educator and independent researcher based in Amsterdam. His practice is grounded in tequio—a form of collective work rooted in Indigenous communities, especially in Oaxaca, Mexico—shaping a practice that merges social participation, pedagogy, and collective knowledge-making. Godínez Nivón 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.

https://www.danielgodineznivon.com/

How long the shadows cast by colonial maps, a workshop with Crystal Bennes

Join artist Crystal Bennes for a participatory workshop and informal discussion as we collectively explore the interconnections between surveying and surveillance across Ireland, from the 16th century to today. Together, we will get up close with facsimile copies of significant historic maps of Ireland made by English mapmakers such as John Speed’s 1610 map, alongside large-scale facsimile copies of Ordnance Survey maps and hand-traced copies of significant historic maps of Ireland made by Ordnance Survey mapmakers in the 19th-century. The workshop takes place on Wednesday 23 July, from 5-7pm at Void Art Centre.

 

Participants are encouraged to bring their own maps! Through informal discussion we will reflect on how mapping, surveying, language and power have ongoing power in today’s society, particularly in relation to borders, private property, land exclusion and access. We will open with a short writing prompt. The workshop discussion will inform a new video artwork currently in development.

 

This workshop is free and open to all. With places limited at 20 participants, please make sure to book here.

 

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Artist Biography

Crystal Bennes, an artist based in Edinburgh and currently in residence at the Irish Museum of Modern Art for 2025. Her work critically examines histories of colonial knowledge production, environmental extraction, gender and language.

Sound Workshop with Anne Marie Deacy

 

Void Art Centre are excited to welcome artist Anne Marie Deacy to Derry city for a weekend-long Sound Workshop on Saturday 31 August and Sunday 1 September, 12.30pm – 4.30pm

Register here.

 

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This workshop will act as an introduction to sound art, listening methodologies, field recording, sound walking and collective sound mapping as a response to themes mirrored in Void’s current exhibition Nyctalopia, by Adrián Balseca.

Using hearing as our sense and the theme of alternate perspectives, participants will work with sound to create a collective piece exploring other ways for us to connect with and navigate our surroundings using sound as a portal and a catalyst, fostering deeper understanding and other ways of perceiving the places and spaces we occupy. In addition, if you have a small object or crystal that resonates with you, bring it along as we will also touch on the sonic properties of objects.

This workshop requires no previous experience, it will be held in an informal, safe and open setting with breaks, reading resources and a sharing table for its duration.

The workshop also aims to be all inclusive, however considering it will be based on sound it will not be suitable for those with auditory sensitivity.

As weather is unpredictable please dress for the elements.

 

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A detailed outline of the weekend can be found below:

 

▪️Day one:
• Introduction to sound art and field recording practice.
• An overview of different microphones used in recording, including the hidden, discreet and/or heightened or overlooked aspects of our sonic environment.
• Listening exercises and shared sounding.
• The first of two sound walks.
• Mapping results with pen and paper and a shared dialogue informing the work.

▪️Day two:
• Listening exercises, shared experiences and collective decisions based on the previous days insights, revelations and dreams.
• Introduction to basic recording techniques.
• Participants supplied with recorder and mic that suits them best.
• The second sound walk using recording devices – help will always be on hand.
• A sharing of recordings and collective decisions on final map & piece.
• Listening session and sonic reflections.

 

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Anne Marie Deacy biography:

Anne Marie Deacy is an Irish sound artist whose focus lies in the creation of work that explores natural & man-made systems, and our connections with nature, rituals, the land and the cosmos. Her practice is informed by field recording and also grounded in extensive research on the philosophies of vibration, the resonance of materiality, information transfer and cultural shifts. She explores the fluidity of memory, time, place and space, with an ear to the future, while utilising listening as a form of activism ( ref: Pauline Oliveros) and sound as a catalyst for change in times of crisis and disconnect.

Anne Marie’s work is elaborated through collaborative and interactive forms and is articulated through sculpture, installation, transmission art, sonic publication, collective participatory actions, composition and performance.

Anne Marie has showcased work and held residencies both nationally and internationally. She has been kindly supported by The National Sculpture Factory, The Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland, Galway County Council, European Union & the Goethe-Institut Culture Moves Europe Fund.

 

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The workshop is supported by Henry Moore Foundation, who are kindly funding the public programme associated with our current exhibition Nyctalopia with Adrián Balseca.

 

Storytelling Through Textiles with Tessa Amery

Thursday 18 April | 2.30pm-4pm | Book here

Join Tessa Amery for this beginner weaving workshop. In this workshop, you will learn the foundational skills that are needed to start your weaving journey. However, this is more than just mastering the basics – it’s about reimagining the possibilities of found materials, igniting your imagination to create something truly unique.

By using textiles that have lost their original purpose, you will discover a new way of bringing life to your old materials. Delve into the fascinating stories woven within each fabric, and let their history inspire your own artistic journey. Join us for an immersive experience where you’ll explore the art of weaving, discovering the endless potential of repurposing material and storytelling through textiles.

This workshop is for those aged 10+. Booking is free, but essential. See the booking link above

Social Permaculture Training with Alfred Decker

A three day training session at Void Art Centre exploring Social Permaculture, and the learnings we can take from ecological principles and patterns.

Training dates and times: Tuesday 6 February 2024, 10am-7pm / Wednesday 7 February, 10am-7pm / Thursday 8 February, 10am-7pm

PLEASE NOTE: The training lasts the duration of three days, please only sign up if you can make all the days. By buying one ticket, you are buying a ticket for the three training days.

 

Permaculture is a design system for creating sustainable and resilient communities and environments. It offers practical tools for generating productive and efficient landscapes as well as organisations and social structures.

While the discipline originated as an ecological method for designing sustainable full-featured human settlements, more recently the design principles have been applied in urban, social and group contexts to organise, communicate and cooperate more effectively, rethinking existing social and economic structures – we call this Social Permaculture.

Social permaculture is about connection – between people, economies, and governing structures – and creating the conditions for humans to flourish on a societal level.

The ethics and principles of permaculture suggest a strong critique of current forms of social organisation and economic relationships. If we take seriously the idea of learning from natural systems, we are encouraged to reimagine economic and social systems as embedded in these, supporting the resilience of the system as a whole. Learning about ecological principles and patterns can help us to transform our human interactions and organisations to be dynamic, responsive to change and a means of flourishing for everyone involved.

During three days in February (the 6th, 7th, and 8th), and then later through videoconference, participants will examine how to apply permaculture to an organisation through:

 

  • Introduction to Permaculture & Social Permaculture.
  • Working Effectively in Groups: how to collaborate effectively and strategies for creating environments in which something more than the sum of the individual parts can happen. Avoid the typical pitfalls for all groups (power, money, sexuality, etc.). How to increase the energy of an organisation and sustain it.
  • Organisational and Decision-Making Structures.
  • Facilitation, Meetings & Non-violent Communication.
  • Going Forward as an Organisation.

 

The training will be facilitated by Alfred Decker, an award-winning permaculture designer, a certified educator with the Permaculture Association of Britain, and one of Europe’s leading and innovative permaculture educators. Alfred has also facilitated on two other events connecting permaculture to cultural institutions: Under the Paving Stones, the Soil! Online course in Permaculture, Art and Social Change; and Towards Perma-Cultural Institutions: Exercises in Collective Thinking, where he first met Void Director Viviana Checchia.

 

Void Art Centre is a wheelchair accessible venue. You can see a full, detailed description of access here.

Spooky Halloween willow lantern making workshops!

Spooky Halloween willow lantern making workshops!

Part of Derry Halloween festival 2023

Saturday 28th October

Bookable slots 10-11am, 11:30-12:30am, 2-3pm and 3:30-4:30pm

 

Awaken the Walled City and make your own spooky Halloween Willow Lantern to take with you to the Halloween parade and/or decorate your home with, on Saturday 28th October at Void Art Centre with Sinead Crumlish!

 

Throughout the day there will be four bookable workshops at Void Art Centre which are suitable for anyone aged 8+. Children aged 8-14 must be accompanied by and have the support of their parent/guardian during these workshops (one ticket is enough for a parent and child – tickets are sold per participant). Young people between the ages of 14 and 16, can attend this workshop alone but a permission form must be filled out by a parent/guardian upon arrival/ahead of the workshop and emergency contact details should be left at the front desk. This workshop is also suitable for individual adults.

Bookable slots include: 10-11am, 11:30-12:30am, 2-3pm and 3:30-4:30pm. Each workshop will have limited spaces.

Tickets cost £3 per participant.

Please note, you are only required to book 1 ticket per participant. If you are supporting your child, you do not need to book a ticket for yourself. You only need to book an additional ticket if you plan to engage in the workshop on a personal level aswell.

Image credits: Canva

Print + Protein

Print + Protein

Thursday 19 October, 6-8pm

 

Print + Protein is a peer-led philosophy reading group at Void Art Centre organised by Aphra Hill which relates to the themes addressed in Void’s current exhibitionary project, using diverse theory to expand alternative understandings of contemporary art. It takes its name from the essay Virtual Bodies and Flickering Signifiers by Katherine Hayles which explores immaterial media and the affinity between books and bodies.

 

The next session will take place on Thursday 19th October from 6-8pm. During this session, the group will discuss selected excerpts from The Orpheus Double Bind: What Can Writing Save?  by Turkish writer and cultural critic Nurdan Gürbilek. The Orpheus Double Bind is the English translation of “Orpheus Çıkmazı,” – a chapter in the book Sessizin Payı (The Share of the Silent, Metis Yayınları, 2015) by the literary critic Nurdan Gürbilek. This book was published as part of bewitched, bewildered, bothered, Banu Cennetoğlu’s artistic intervention for Asia Art Archive’s exhibition Portals, Stories, and Other Journeys, curated by Michelle Wong and on view at Tai Kwun Contemporary from 23 April to 1 August 2021. Framed as a question, the text uses the myth of Orpheus along with other instances from literature to interrogate what is at stake in employing artistic practice as testimonial. This chapter explores the insufficiency of language in times of crisis, echoed by Cennetoğlu’s installation at Void, right?, as the bouquets of gold letter balloons slowly deflate.

 

Print + Protein is free to attend and open to the public but booking via Eventbrite is required. A copy of the text will be provided to attendees in advance of the event. Participants are not required to have their thoughts pre-prepared but it is encouraged to read the text or the selected excerpts before the session if possible. Participants of any background or level of experience are welcome to join. Refreshments are provided.

 

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Aphra Hill is a writer, researcher and recent graduate of Visual Culture at NCAD.