In October 2017 Rua Red will embark on a new high profile International Exhibition Programme and surrounding Education and Outreach Programme focusing on the importance of People, Politics and Place.
The new programme is specifically tailored to Rua Red as it is designed and developed around important issues that are significant and meaningful to the people of South Dublin County.
South Dublin County has a population of 265,205, making South Dublin the 4th most populated County in Ireland. South Dublin is a County of contrasting areas in terms of socio economic profile. Using the Relative Index Scores for 2011 South Dublin is the 10th most affluent County in Ireland with a score of -0.1. However rates of disadvantage vary greatly across the County, with a score of 8.9 in the Rathfarnam local electoral area and -8.4 in the Tallaght South local electoral area. At small area level the differences are more extreme, with 35 small areas classified as very disadvantaged and 1 area classified as extremely disadvantaged. This is one of only 3 such extremely disadvantaged areas in the state. In these small areas there are very high levels of people who are experiencing, or who are at risk of poverty. In relation to educational attainment the number of people who have completed education to degree level or higher is in line with the national average. However in some areas of the County the rate is just slightly more than half that national average. The same is true for levels of unemployment. In the local electoral area of Templeogue – Terenure there was an 11.9% rate of unemployment at the 2011 Census, the rate in the Tallaght South local electoral area was 29.5%. While the more up to date live register figures do show a similar rate of increase across all local electoral areas in levels of employment in recent years, it is clear that some areas are starting from a lower base.
(Excerpt from SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY LOCAL ECONOMIC AND COMMUNITY PLAN 2016-21)
Community Collaborations
Throughout the programme Rua Red will work closely with and for the people of this county to create a new programme that is accessible and meaningful to them. The programme will explore themes such as poverty, homelessness, displacement, movement, survival, homophobia and racism through an extensive in depth education and outreach programme. The Rua Red team in conjunction with the artists will design this wraparound programme that will establish alternative new ways to engage with the exhibitions. This programme will utilise the various arts forms that are on offer in Rua Red as a response to the exhibition; for example our dancer in residence will work with people from the local community to create a dance piece that addresses the themes of the exhibition. To this end we are also working closely with our Creative Residents and Studio Artists as there is a wealth of social and cultural capital that is in existence in the building.
Cultural Quarter Collaborations
We have also started a number of collaborations with our neighbouring organisations The Civic Theatre and the County Library. These collaborations bolster all of the organisations that are involved making each of our cultural offers stronger and more diverse. Currently The Civic Theatre and Rua Red are jointly working on an exciting dance project with Liz Roche Company which will involve working with the former UFC flyweight Paddy Holohan from Tallaght and a group of young local martial arts experts towards a dance piece, other collaborations between Rua Red and the Civic Theatre include a newly commissioned piece of research on the Transcultural population in South Dublin County, First Fortnight Festival, Red line Book Festival, Crinnui Na Casca, Creative Ireland Commissions and Unwrapped.
Rua Red has also started a partnership with the County Library, throughout the summer both organisations provided exhibition and library tours for the other’s Summer camps. For our forthcoming exhibition programme the library will provide reading material for a reading corner that will accompany each exhibition which is content related. This reading corner will create another avenue for engagement to each of the exhibitions.
Exhibition Programme
The new exhibition programme will be in partnership with the London based non-profit organisation ‘a/political’ who collaborate with internationally renowned socio-political artists. ‘a/political’ initiate and tour large-scale projects world-wide and produce ambitious projects outside the controls of the contemporary art market. a/political represent a number of high profile international artists such as Ai Wei Wei, Andres Serrano, Santiago Sierra, Gustav Metzger, Barbara Kruger, Shiran Neeshat and Andres Molodkin many of whom have never exhibited in Ireland before.
This repertoire of artists would normally associated with much larger more established organisations such as the Tate or the Museum of Modern Art and will platform Rua Red internationally to another level. For the opening night in October we have confirmed a wide range of International Press, curators and collectors who will be traveling from London, New York and Europe.
