Delighted to share details about a new accredited international summer school we’re launching as part of the NCAD + UCD project:

City Life: A Shared Summer School

Celebrated for its rich cultural heritage and history, Dublin is at a crucial point of transition. Currently re-negotiating its approach to urbanity, the city is an exemplar of many of the most critical challenges facing the contemporary global metropolis.

In July 2015 (13th – 31st), UCD and NCAD will join forces to offer a unique summer school programme giving students the opportunity to pursue their disciplinary and scholarly interests through a creative and critical engagement with the ongoing transformation of Dublin today.

Over a three-week period, students will explore and respond to Dublin’s rich urban culture. Along with numerous tours, visits and special events, the programme will combine shared studio activity with focused workshops, seminars and lectures.

Students will be given unique access to leaders in the cultural and creative sector, meeting and working with significant practitioners, artists, museum directors, and critical thinkers. High-profile visiting speakers will also contribute to the programme.

Along with Dr Declan Long from NCAD, I’ll be coordinating one of the programme tracks:

Culture, Memory and the City:

This strand is intended for participants keen to interrogate the relationship between memory and the city, through psycho-geographic and critical writing practices. Daily sessions will explore the imprint and trace of modern Irish historical experience on Dublin’s urban spaces and institutions. Together we will track (and experience) how film, photography, commemoration, ritual, artistic practice and and urban placemaking have intersected with political, social, economic conditions over the past century.

Students will be encouraged to formulate a creative and critical response to daily topics in the form of a photo essay/blog, piece of critical writing and group presentation. Sample sessions include:

• Institutions, Archives and Memory (National Gallery of Ireland / National Archives)

• Making and Working: Producing Culture in the City (Temple Bar Gallery & Studios / Francis Bacon Studio, Dublin City Gallery – The Hugh Lane / Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar)

• Public Monuments and Urban Memories (walking tour of Dublin city public monuments)

• Film, the City, and Memory: Dublin Onscreen (film viewing in association with the Irish Film Institute, Temple Bar)

Applications are open until 1 May, and details of the programme & costs are available here: http://ncad-ucd.ie/summer-school/. Happy to answer any questions as well about the programme, just drop me an email!