This Summer, the Sustainable Futures Summer School brings together artists, designers and makers to share their skills and knowledge. Our aim is to relearn forgotten practices and processes and reconnect with the land, nature and each other.

Some events are free, some ticketed, please see the relevant page for details.

Friday 29 May

10am – 1pm | Colour Field Planting Meitheal with Hollie Kearns

Join Hollie Kearns, curator of Colour Field at Workhouse Union, to plant an experimental artist’s garden, nurturing plants used for colour making.

Saturday 30 May

10am – 12.30pm (Darning) + 1.30pm – 4pm (Sashiko) | Textile Repair: Darning and Sashiko

Join artist Toufan Hosseiny to learn to repair or reinforce worn areas of your knitted and woven fabrics using a needlework sewing techniques.

Sunday 31 May

10am – 4pm | Create a Book Documenting an Outdoor Landscape with Natural Inks

Join artist Mairead Holohan to experiment with natural inks made from foraged materials, make your own concertina notebook and create a 360° sketch of your chosen view outside with natural inks and charcoal.

Tuesday 9 June

10am – 4pm | Paper Making

Join artist Mary Conroy to experiment with making your own paper from scratch using a variety of materials including plants foraged from the grounds of Carlow College.

Saturday 13 June

10am – 4pm | Permacomputing Workshop: Repurposing Smartphones

Learn to repurpose old Android devices, giving them a second life with Colm O’Neill; old phones can become a camera for wildlife observation, be converted to digital signage or host a website.

11am – 12.30pm | Little Weave Workshop and Nature Trail

Using foraged materials, children learn how to make their own little loom and create a unique nature weave with their adults, led by Siobhán Jordan.

Saturday 27 June

11am – 5pm | Shoppe: A Drop in Garment Mending and Making Workshop

Join Julia MacConville and Susanne Horsch for a drop-in weekend workshop sharing techniques for repairing and repurposing textiles and old clothes.

Sunday 28 June

2pm – 5pm | Shoppe: A Drop in Garment Mending and Making Workshop

Join Julia MacConville and Susanne Horsch for a drop-in weekend workshop sharing techniques for repairing and repurposing textiles and old clothes.

Saturday 4 July

10am – 4pm | Soil Chromatography Workshop

Join artist Kasia Kaminska to create chromatic prints using soil from various locations around VISUAL and a soil sample from your garden, local park, woodland or any other favourite nature spot.

Monday 20 – Friday 24 July

10am – 4pm | Forest School Summer Camp

Saturday 8 August

10am – 4pm | Customise Clothing

Fashion designer, artist and dancer Tobi Balogun with lead young people in a workshop customising tired old clothes to create exciting new looks!

Sunday 9 August

2pm – 5pm | Sewing Someone to Love: Soft Toy Making Workshop

Bring your own soft toy to life using lots of lovely material scraps, ribbon, googly eyes, wool and fabric markers. With help from your grown-up and Lucy’s sewing machine (you can work the pedal!), do your own designing, stuffing, add eyes and maybe a tail, it will be a unique one of a kind, just like you!

Thursday 13 August

10am – 4pm | Mark Making with Natural Colour for Textiles

A day-long exploratory workshop with visual artist Marielle MacLeman introducing some of the techniques she uses with natural colour, including her developing interest in printmaking with natural inks.