Irish Arts & Culture Program

Artistic Exploration: Filling Your Creative Well

Artistic exploration is about filling your creative well, finding inspiration and nurturing your creative side in a supportive environment. It is about thinking of art in new ways and experiencing your Irish journey through the lens of art.

This is accomplished through a combination of working with professional artists and daily creative connection exercises.

You will be working with local Irish artists who will provide a breadth of new artistic perspectives and skillsets. Over the course of the program, you will participate in daily workshops across a range of artistic disciplines. Our team of artists put the emphasis on the creative process rather than the end result, creating a learning environment that is more about the creative journey than the end destination.

Daily creative connection exercises give you the tools to temporarily break free of the logical, analytical mind and journey into your artist’s mind, where holistic, sensory experiences are craved to feed your inner inventor. The ‘Artists Pages’ and ‘Artist Date’ are the primary tools for aiding this process and we set aside each week for these exercises.

You don’t need to be particularly artistically skilled to enjoy these workshops, all we ask is that you are open-minded and excited about participating.

Let your imagination run free and pursue your work purely for the joy of learning and creating something unique to yourself.

Daily Workshops with Professional Artists

One of the elements our students love most about their creative journey with Irish Gap Year is the opportunity to work with so many talented artists. This offers students a broad exposure of complimentary artistic perspectives and skill sets.

In our workshops we seek to go beyond simply teaching students how to imitate the world around them. Instead, tutors help guide students in developing their own personal self-expression through process-orientated art. Art that allows different outcomes and focuses on the creative process rather than emulating a preconceived finished product. After all, the essence of art is expressing oneself.

Your work will be inspired from your travels and may be used as a stepping stone onto other art programs or simply as a vehicle to further develop your interest in a particular area of the arts. You will work with our team of professional artists in the following disciplines:

• Photography
• Found Art and Upcycling
• Film-Making
• Wood-Carving and Wood Turning
• Leather-Crafting
• Jewellery Making
• Painting
• Calligraphy
• Charcoal
• Land Art

Creative Connection: Developing tools for releasing your creative spirit 

Daily creative connection exercises give students the tools to temporarily break free of their logical, analytical mind and journey into their artist’s mind, where holistic, sensory experiences are craved to feed your inner inventor.

The Artists Pages and Artist Date are the primary tools for this process. We set aside each week for these exercises.

The Artist Pages involve ‘sending’ your thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears and subconscious self out into the ether – It is a mental cleansing, a clearing of mind-clutter and a method of creating space for inspiration to thrive unchallenged.

The Artists date is about receiving information, inspiration, insight and guidance by opening yourself up to creative input. On Artist Dates, we journey to inspiring places (oftentimes in nature) and observe, connect and drink-in the experience. The Artist Date is a solo-experience that is pre-planned and defended against interlopers and distraction (no phones!), it aims to top-up your creative well, allowing you to draw on this inspiration at later times.

Experiential Learning: Learning by Doing

Experiential learning is learning by doing, reflecting on the experience, then applying the skills and lessons to future endeavours.

We use the principles of experiential learning on our Irish Arts & Culture Program to educate our students in Art skills, Adulting-skills, Irish history and culture. In fact, this practice permeates the entire program so that the whole experience becomes one big learning opportunity.

This approach to education is fun, hands-on and practical. We hope that our students will take away a new method of learning that is non-academic, but valuable nonetheless.

Here are a few examples of what experiential learning on our Irish Arts & Culture looks like:

Irish History

Explore and compare the ruins of Gaelic and Plantation castles, clambering around their walls and cavernous rooms. Here, we will learn about the difference between a Gaelic castle and a Planter’s castle and the period of Irish history known as the Ulster Plantation and its significance in Irish history.

Irish Culture

Complete our ‘Humans of Dingle’ project, where you will set out to meet and interview a local person from the small, coastal village of Dingle in County Kerry. After our expedition you will present the person’s story to the group along with your own artistic interpretation of their portrait.

Independence Building

With the support of your Program Leaders you will learn
to prepare wholesome and nutritious meals, to budget, to manage a household and how to plan and host events like the La Cheile’ Art Exhibition.

Irish Art

Learn about the legacy of wood spirits as protectors of Irish homes in ancient times as you carve a wood spirit of your own in our wood carving workshop.

Cultivating Independence: Your Key to Freedom

Learning to lead and manage your life takes time and practice. Building your independence in a supportive and constructive atmosphere is one of the primary goals of our Irish Arts & Culture Program.

How do we accomplish this? Through a process that we call ‘scaled responsibility’. This involves building trust with our students and gradually increasing their responsibility and independence level as the program progresses.

From the onset of the program, students will be responsible for their household’s cleanliness and general upkeep including cleaning up after meals, doing dishes (sometimes not even your own!), doing your laundry and taking out the rubbish.

A more challenging piece in building responsibility is self-advocating. Moving beyond the parental communication loop is essential to leading one’s own life as a young person. We strongly encourage our students to advocate directly to the Irish Gap Year team when issues arise, breaking that ‘digital umbilical cord’ and learning the invaluable lesson of standing on your own two feet.

Travel throughout Ireland and exploring our cities, towns and villages also helps students build their independence. For some students this will be their first foray into the world without their parents, while others will have travelled independently previously. Either way, there is much to be gained by learning to navigate a new country in a safe and supportive way.

We believe that one needs to be allowed to learn from both their successes and challenges to grow and become independent. We therefore offer support rather than handholding and encourage insight and learning over discipline.