Education and Community Programme Highlighted at IMMA
An exhibition celebrating ten years of the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s award-winning Education and Community Programme opens to the public on Friday 27 April. ‘Points of Entry’ documents some of the many initiatives – ranging from an exhibition exploring violence against women to the very popular Explorer family project – by which people of all ages have been encouraged to access and enjoy the, often challenging, area of contemporary visual culture. The exhibition forms part of a rich and varied programme of events being organised by IMMA to mark its tenth anniversary in May this year.
‘Points of Entry’ features project work and working processes developed with older people from St Michael’s Parish Art Group and with a cross section of age groups from the Family Resource Centre, St Michael’s Estate, Inchicore: also work with youth leaders and children from three local parishes. These experimental projects inform the broader access programme, an example of which is ‘Focus On …’, which creates a point of entry for new groups of children, young people, people with disabilities and older people nationally and has been running for five years. IMMA’s innovative work in the field of museum education is illustrated by the ‘Breaking the Cycle’ initiative, a research project aimed at combating education disadvantage carried out in partnership with the Department of Education and Science, and the annual Primary Schools Programme which creates classroom-based programmes linked to Museum visits.
Photographic, video and written documentation from all projects and programmes is presented alongside a selection of work created in workshops by members of the older people’s group, by members of the Family Resource Centre and by children from St Thomas’s Junior School in Tallaght.
Commenting on the Museum’s work in this area over the past ten years, Helen O’Donoghue, Head of the Education and Community Department said: “The Museum’s philosophy is based on the belief that people are capable of engaging with the most challenging aspects of contemporary visual culture and of creating meaning as a result of this engagement that has resonance in their own lives. We work on the underlying principle that access to visual art is a right for all sectors of society. The programme aims to create opportunities for engagement with visual art in the galleries in the encounter with artworks, in the studios through dialogue with artists and by making and exhibiting artworks that have personal meaning for participants on programmes.”
‘Point of Entry’ continues until 9 September.
Admission is free.
Opening hours: Tue – Sat 10.00am – 5.30pm
Sun, Bank Holidays 12 noon – 5.30pm
Closed: Mondays
For further information and colour and black and white images please contact Philomena Byrne or Monica Cullinane at Tel : +353 1 612 9900,
Fax : +353 1 612 9999
19 April 2001