Open Call to Participate in Public Artwork

Posted on 4 Oct 2021

Artist Sarah Pierce and Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin are seeking volunteers to participate in a public art event. 

  - Do you want to take part in a unique and meaningful public artwork?

- Are you over 18?

- Have you emigrated to Dublin and do you speak a native language other than English?  

- Would you be willing to read a short text written in your native language out loud in public?

- Are you free on 10 October 2021, from 2pm to be outdoors in the Phoenix Park? (and the rain date 17 October)

If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions, and to find out more, please reply via email to Nasser Aidara at the New Communities Partnership nasser@newcommunities.ie

Participants will choose the text they would like to read in public for the event. For example, a short story, a letter, a newspaper article, a passage from a book. The text should not be longer than ±5 minutes when read out loud. On 10 October a 2pm we will gather in the shelter in the Phoenix Park and you will read the text out loud in your own language. The text will not be translated to English.

Participation is voluntary and unpaid. We will follow COVID-19 measures for gathering outdoors, including social distancing and sanitising surfaces.  

Any person over age 18, from any country or with no nation, male, female, non-binary, able and with different-abilities may join the work. A microphone will be provided, and the event will be photographed and recorded. 

This is a public artwork by Sarah Pierce, called Shelter Bread & Freedom, that invites the audience to hear languages spoken in Dublin every day by people who live here. As Sarah Pierce says: “I'm thinking about activities that sustain our connections to one another. For this multi-textual, multi-lingual artwork, reading out loud is a type of expression, from a community outward. The decision to not-translate this moment is about enacting listening as a communal act of attention and care.”

Nasser Aidara

Community Development Coordinator

New Community Partnership