I know you from the Archive, but you don’t know me
What I see:
A Reflection on the task of artistically responding to Common Ground’s Twenty-Six (almost 27) Year Archive
MARKING 25 Commission for Common Ground, December 2024 to June 2026.
In December 2024, Common Ground commissioned me to respond to their 26 year (almost 27 year) archive of work connecting communities and artists, with full access to all materials, including paper files, comprehensive audio visual documentation (about 200 hours) and artworks. The MARKING 25 Commissions are a way to mark their twenty-fifth year anniversary. Now available to read, or listen to, or visit in their archive, this new text looks at Community Arts Practice, Class, public land, public art, the impacts of austerity, and, our future unknown in the context of our collective contemporary past examined through this extraordinary archive.
Published by Common Ground 2026.
ISBN: 978-0-9539024-9-1
There are three ways to engage with this new work.
The Text is available to read online here.
The audio verion is available to listen to here.
1 Single Manuscript is available to view in Common Ground’s Archive, by appointment.
It’s hard to leave this archive
I was privileged to be one of the first artists to respond to this incredible archive, and I’ve lived with it for nineteen months, I’m still obsessed with it’s content, and context. Common Ground gave me a real gift in commissioning me to work with this material which spans almost three decades of their work connecting communities and artists within the Canals area, which includes Fatima, Bluebell, Dolphin House, St. Michael’s Estate and Rialto. Along the way, key moments within the contemporary history of Community Development were captured and held for safe keeping alongside the wealth of community arts porcesses, programmes and projects.
With special thanks to Siobhán Geoghegan and Ger Nolan, Board Members Rita Fagan and Catherine Marshall, and all at Common Ground for their support and careful considerations across multiple edits since February as I finalised this text, and for all their patience with my questions about what I was discovering in the archive in real time before that. And, for my time as an artist in residence in The Lodge, thank you, it was a real joy to be there and develop relationships and firendships in St. Michael’s Estate. Special thanks too to Frank Sweeney for all the watching and walking and talking together as we first began discovering this archive.
About Common Ground
Common Ground is an arts organisation working since 1999 with artists and communities. Our rich and imaginative programmes build ways to address local and global issues through the unifying and transformative power of the arts. Our work challenges how access to the arts should not depend on where you’re born, your wealth or identity. In 2003, we opened studio 468, an artist studio based in St. Andrews Community Centre, Rialto. It offers opportunities for artists and local groups to work collaboratively while supporting artists developing their socially engaged practice. In September 2019 we moved into The Lodge, Inchicore – the old caretaker’s house at Goldenbridge Cemetery. The Lodge houses our staff and artist(s) in residence and provides a meeting space for the artists and local groups we work with.