9:00 – 14:00, 1st of November, 2025
Home for Cooperation
28 Markou Drakou St. 1102
UN Buffer Zone, Nicosia
Presentation Session
How can we create spaces of solidarity and commons in times of struggle?
Discussion Session
How do artistic practices and urban encounters in public space challenge issues of justice and transformability?
Nicosia Townhall Meeting: Making Space Read More »
An evening of discussions and performances (17:00–20:00)
With contributions by:
Mel Jordan (Coventry University) and Andrew Hewitt (University of Northampton), leaders of SPACEX; Jitka Hlavačková (Prague City Gallery/ GHMP, Prague), Susanne Prinz (Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin), Vittorio Iervese (Università di Modena, Modena), Aline Hernandez/ Marianna Takou (CASCO Art Institute, Utrecht); Annette Krauss (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Julienne Lorz (University of Applied Arts Vienna), Barbara Putz-Plecko (University of Applied Arts Vienna / former Head of the Dept. Art and Communicative Practice), and others.
Moderation: Kathrin Wildner (urban ethnologist, metroZones, Berlin).
Townhall Meeting: Empathetic Exchange, 24 Oct 2025, 17:00 Read More »
Living Better Together conference concludes the Spatial Practices in Art and ArChitecture for Empathetic EXchange (SPACEX) project; a cross-continental and cross-disciplinary effort bringing together academics and cultural organisations to build stronger networks and maximise the ways in which art, architecture and design promote empathetic ways of living together.
Thursday, November 13, 9:30am – 6pm GMT
Friday, November 14, 9am – 6pm GMT
Book tickets: Day one, Day two
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum
Jordan Well Coventry CV1 5QP
The Herbert Art Gallery & Museum is wheelchair accessible, further information on accessibility can be found on their website.
This event is free to attend, booking essential, donations welcome.
Day one
Publishing in the Counterpublic Sphere interrogates how spatial practice of art, design, film and architecture can create counterpublic spheres where participants mobilise collective discourses of imagination, care and resistance to resist neoliberal and authoritarian rationales.
Walking as Resistance examines the role of walking practices as critical spatial practices that can address social, geopolitical and environmental issues, support spatial justice, engage in multi-sensory experiences of the everyday, and amplify unheard stories.
Spaces of Knowledge examines the role of urban walking as a methodological approach to foster social change and policy development.
PhD Experiences shares the experiences of being PhD students within the SpaceX consortium and how the secondment process informed and supported our research.
Introduction to the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Staff Exchanges initiative is an opportunity for attendees to ask questions about the funding call and project delivery processes.
Day two
Town Hall Reporting introduces dissemination events in Austria and Cyprus designed to communicate spacex activities with a wider audience and extend discussions to a specific locale.
The Digital Counterpublic Sphere interrogates the challenges these technological developments have given rise to, including surveillance, AI, and the manosphere.
Unsettling Institutions responds to a cultural context increasingly shaped by neoliberal and authoritarian value systems, and tests alternative approaches centred on collectivity, care, and commoning.
Gaming the System: Understanding the role of games in creating generative and empathic spaces of exchange explores ‘serious’ game design as a creative participatory practice that fosters discussion and engagement with social and spatial justice issues while exploring creative solutions to these challenges.
Gameplay Event: CRITICAL URBAN PLAY: SOLIDARITY WITH PALESTINE, invites you to play one of the serious board games designed by students at the Department of Architecture, University of Cyprus, during 2023-2024.
Living Better Together: SPACEX conference, 13th & 14th November 2025 Read More »
Please join the ArtSpaceCity group for a talk by visiting SPACEX RISE Researcher Carlos Noronha Feio on 11 October @ 11.30.
The talk will take place at the Institute for Creative Cultures, Coventry University and online
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 315 297 150 281
Passcode: ixbEpC
Carlos Noronha Feio consumes juxtaposes and performs media as research into cultural local and global identity adopting culturally significant images locations and symbols as a form of creative interference with meaning demonstrating the almost arbitrary nature in which cultural significance is interpreted.
Repeated in several texts the sentence above can be broken into the following logic: Noronha Feio’s work is a bit all over the place. He follows his interests and curiosities, his eagerness and needs in a manner akin to a collector. His is a rhizomatic practice where research (whatever that might mean) plays an important role. Noronha Feio is driven as much to produce as well as to have and to hold, to show, to understand himself as well as some social construction in his surroundings. He sometimes tries to communicate with his work with words: without a promise of being clear…
From 2020 until 2022 he was a core member, and the coordinator for Art and Creativity, of Oeiras’ bid to European Capital of Culture 2027.
Noronha Feio is seconded from The Reserva, Lisbon to Coventry University
Please join the ArtSpaceCity group for a talk by visiting SPACEX RISE Researcher Ilga Minjon on 28 September at 13:30.
The talk will take place at the Institute for Creative Cultures, Coventry University and online.
Microsoft Teams
Meeting ID: 316 132 838 114
Passcode: 5dyKqG
Ilga Minjon is a curator, researcher and advisor working at Stroom Den Haag and a tutor at Design Academy Eindhoven with a background in Art History, and interests in societal questions around public space, ecology, and technology. She aims to weave future imaginaries from artistic practices that speculate on the senses and (networked) relations, as well as on queer, decolonial and feminist re-writings of belonging. At Stroom she has curated Attempst to Read the World (Differently): Three Exhibitions in Five Acts, with Max de Waard, Monira al Qadiri and Jean Katambayi Mukendi, Lawrence Lek: Nøtel The Hague, Yvonne Dröge Wendel: To Be To Gather; and most recently From the Sea to the Clouds to the Soil a group exhbition mapping kinship relations across time and technologies with Femke Herregraven, Risk Hazekamp, Urok Shirhan, Yeon Sung and Natasha Tontey. Since 2017, Ilga has initiated the Uncertainty Seminars an ongoing cycle of experimental exchanges, platformfing interdisciplinary ways to imagine doubt as a cultural strategy.
A Performative Walk & Risograph Sticker Printing Workshop & Exhibition by Barbara Holub and Jaspar Joseph-Lester From Van Abbe Museum to Onomatopee, Eindhoven
Walk: Saturday, Sept.16, 15:30 – 17:00
Meeting point: Van Abbe Museum,
Stratumsedijk 2, 5611 ND Eindhoven
Opening of the exhibition: Sept.16, 18:00
Exhibition: Sept.17-–Oct.8, 2023
Location: Onomatopee Project Space,
Lucas Gasselstraat 2a, 5613 LB Eindhoven
Walks, parades, maps and stickers function as powerful tools. They can unearth how physical and immaterial forces are interwoven, and act as a forensic exercise that reveals elements of unnoticed livelihood, traces of profound mutations, and poetic moments that stand as (in)visible markers of the life of a city.
The walk between Van Abbe Museum and Onomatopee refers to WE PARAPOM! European Parade of Apple Trees, a flagship project by Barbara Holub for the European Capital of Culture Chemnitz 2025 (2021-23), and will look at specific urban conditions of two post-industrial cities, Eindhoven and Chemnitz (former Karl-Marx-City). At first glance, these two cities don’t appear to have any obvious connections or similarities. However, through the process of walking, parading and mapping we will begin to understand how the silent and ephemeral forces that meet us on the street speak of the causal connections that bind these two cities together. Through the walk we will explore specific topics of urban and social issues and hidden poetic moments in the neighbourhood by addressing and involving the community in active and critical modes of seeing, documenting and mapping.
The performative walk will be followed by a Riso printing workshop at Onomatopee, where there will be an opportunity to design and print stickers inspired by the walk.
The Walk, The Parade, The Pavilion and The Sticker, is a zine published by Onomatopee. The publication focuses on the walk as an artistic method and addresses the ambivalence between a ‘walk’ and a ‘parade’. It accompanies the performative walk, along with the screening of the videos „Sky Pool“ by Jaspar Joseph-Lester and „More Opportunities“ by Barbara Holub.
For more information click here. If you would like to join, please email: [email protected] (subject: Walk 16/9 Onomatopee)
This program is free however there is limited space available.
The Walk, The Parade, The Pavilion and The Sticker is a project by Barbara Holub and Jaspar Joseph-Lester in collaboration with Van Abbe Museum and Onomatopee in the frame of SPACEX.
THE WALK, THE PARADE, THE PAVILION AND THE STICKER Read More »
SPACEX Training Event on Cultural Policy, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 21-22 September 2023
The research group “Artistic Knowing: Research in and on Art and Cultural Practices” of the Amsterdam School for Heritage, Memory and Material Culture at the University of Amsterdam is pleased to welcome the SPACEX community for a two day discussion on the present and, above all, the future of one of the most controversial practices within contemporary cultural policies: Evaluation. In particular, we will try to envision how managerial evaluations of cultural practices, as the ones imposed by “New Public Management”-oriented reforms, can be replaced by artistic evaluations as cultural practices, as the ones that are organic in artistic work.
There’s an Irish seanfhocial or old saying that goes ‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na ndaoine’. The English translation is ‘we live in each other’s shadow’. In other words, we rely on and need each other. Therefore, to survive the permacrisis that we and our planet faces, we must find new ways, or rediscover old ways, of living and being together. This overarching issue of our interdependence on each other, on other non-humans and on the planet shaped this two day symposium, and it also underscores the remit of the SPACEX research action.
The growing interest in commoning today comes from dissatisfaction, and often deep despair, with the status quo and the manner in which it suppresses social life. Unlike social movements that engage in protests actions from within the hegemonic coordinates of the neoliberal state, commoning is prefigurative. In other words, it seeks to create this better and more equitable future by actively testing out ‘in an embryonic way’ a world beyond capitalism. Commoners experiment with new collective and collaborative forms of living and being together, and by shaping new radical political subjectivities based around interdependence, mutuality and radical care. An essential component of the commons is the will to remain open to all. A commons can only continue to function as a commons as long as it remains open to all newcomers.
Over the course of the two days we discussed how artists, communities and cultural organisations variously engage in commoning practices and practices of radical care. We considered the differences between communities in the Global South that practice commoning as a means of escaping the ‘unlivable live’ neoliberalism has crafted, and how artists, academics and community organisations in the Global North internalise commoning strategies in their day-to-day lives and operations; and whether publicly funded organisations and artistic practices can be considered as commons?
Day 1 kicked off with An Introduction to Behavioural Economics by Kevin Denny (UCD SPACEX researcher). In this session, Denny discussed how psychological insights help explain economic decision making. He also touched on some of the key ideas that shape the field of behavioural economics including bounded rationality, heuristics, and the implications for pro-social behaviour that arise in terms of the ‘problems’ of the commons.
Session 2 saw the participants playing the cooperative boardgame World of Work designed and hosted by Michelle Browne (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD).
Working in teams of 6, the players worked together to deal with external forces, tech innovations and societal changes that assist or reduce job creation in a town like St Helens in the North of England. The aim of the game was to gather a number of social benefits such as housing, sustainable environment and basic income, to improve the lives of those who live in the town.
After lunch on Day 1 (provided by Luncheonette, a long term art project centred around hospitality and food, started by the artist Jennie Moran in 2013), Paul O’Neill (SPACEX Researcher, University College Dublin) led a discussion based workshop that focused on Counter-Mapping the Materiality of the Internet in Dublin City. Working in two groups, the participants critically reflected on our relationship with networked technologies, while considering more sustainable ways of communicating.
Session 4 was a walking tour of Dublin’s ‘The Liberties’ led by Seoidín O’Sullivan (SPACEX researcher NCAD) and Anthony Freeman an artist, beekeeper and community worker who co-founded In Our Shoes is an award winning walking tour charity. https://citiesgovernancesustainability.eu/current-projects/urban-grit/.
After supper, the participants moved onto Project Arts Centre for a tour of the exhibition Being Horizontal / Sínte (curated by Nora Heidorn). The tour was led by Sara Greavu (SPACEX Researcher, Project Arts Centre). In contrast to the standard enlightenment representation of the human body as a singular, upright, able-bodied man, gazing forward, this group exhibition paid caring attention to reclined bodies and to bodies inclined towards each other, favouring a model of the human as interdependent and reliant.
The evening ended with a Performance of Manifest also at Project Arts Centre, which forms part of What Does He Need? – a long term collaborative project by Fiona Whelan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), Brokentalkers, Rialto Youth Project and a Dublin city network of individuals and organisations.
Manifest was a frank and unflinching performance exploring the current state of masculinity. Taking the form of a workshop, a group of men were facilitated in a conversation about what it means to be a man.
The second day, which saw the symposium opening out attendance to NCAD staff and students and invited guests, began with Theories of Commoning. This event interrogated some of the ‘theories of commoning’ that emerge in the writings of two contemporary theorists of the commons. Stavros Stavrides (SPACEX Researcher, LUC) explored the ‘Emancipatory Potentialities of Urban Commoning’ with a focus on Latin America’, and Gary Hall (SPACEX Researcher, CU) interrogated ‘The Commons as Coming Together of Those with Nothing in Common’.
This was followed by Elevenses for the “Hungry Months” hosted by Gareth Kennedy (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), and Students from NCAD FIELD. Since 2020, Gareth has been charged with running the Studio+ NCAD FIELD module in a derelict brown field site beside the College which is in the process of being reappraised as a Novel Ecology. FIELD students served the participants pancakes cooked on a reclaimed manhole cover over a camp fire and also offered tours of the site.
The third event of the day saw participants move to NCAD Gallery for Principles of Space Detection a
performance by Irina Gheorghe that focused on how processes of obstruction, deception and camouflage shape interactions between members of the same social group, and between a society and what it perceives as alien to it. This event was curated by Anne Kelly (SPACEX research, NCAD)
After lunch, Susanne Bosch led The 60 min Commoning ParKour: An embodied commoning experience in the concourse at NCAD. The ParKour involved “seeing” and experiencing the environment in a new way and imagining the possibilities for movement in, with and around it.
The afternoon sessions focused on Commoning as Care Practices. Part 1 saw representatives of cultural organisations Rosie Lynch, Callan Workhouse Union, and Siobhan Geoghegan, Common Ground discuss the role that cultural organisations embedded in local communities play in the development of inclusive and empowered communities capable of producing collective responses to issues of spatial and social justice, care, housing development, climate change, ecology and the urban environment.
Part Two explored how the practices of artist’s Evelyn Broderick, The People’s Shed and Fiona Whelan (SPACEX researcher, NCAD) are embedded in local communities and they role they play in the development of inclusive and empowered communities. The People’s Shed, established by Broderick during her residency in studio 468, is a space for the sharing of skills and social knowledge through collective making. Dr. Fiona Whelan’s practice explores and responds to systemic power relations and inequalities through long-term cross-sectoral collaborations with diverse individuals, groups and organisations.
The symposium drew to a close with an introduction to Our Table by Ellie Kisyombe, co-founder, who discussed how thi ssocial enterprise focuses on producing an inclusive community through multi-cultural food and campaigning to end direct provision in Ireland. This was followed by a delicious feast laid on by Our Table whileparticipants in The People’s Shed led a live Trad music session
SPACEX Training Event 3: Summary Report by Emma Mahony Read More »
Andy Hewitt and Mel Jordan (Partisan Social Club) in conversation with art historian Christa-Maria Lerm Hayes to reflect upon their recent exhibition, entitled Talk to the Land at SIRIUS.
Talk to the Land explored three aspects of commoning: landlordism; how to practice a culture-led recommoning of cities; and utopian settlements in South-West Ireland. Partisan Social Club (PSC) examines alternative modes of community building arising from cooperative proposals and experiments advanced by the eighteenth-century Irish, Cork-based philosopher William Thompson.
The event will include the launch and screening of the film, Collective Nouns II Reflections on Commoning (3mins). The film was produced in conjunction with SIRIUS and includes several contributions from friends, colleagues, and people the PSC met while at SIRIUS.
Talk to the Land is PSC’s first solo show in Ireland. It was developed through multiple residencies at SIRIUS across 2022, following dialogue initiated in 2020. Talk to the Land was curated by Miguel Amado, director of SIRIUS, and produced by SIRIUS.
Register with eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/partisan-social-club-talk-to-the-land-tickets-591281899077
The third SPACEX training event will take place in Dublin from 2-3 March 2023. The focus will be on behavioural economics and commoning. It is being delivered by SPACEX researchers from the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) in conjunction with the Geary Institute, School of Economics at University College Dublin (UCD) and Project Arts Centre, Dublin.
Travel to NCAD here: https://www.ncad.ie/about/visitor-info/
Please book your accommodation in Dublin early as it can get very expensive. The areas Dublin 1, Dublin 2, Dublin 7 and Dublin 8 are within walking distance to training event venues.
Day 1: Thursday 2nd March
Locations: From 10.00am: Estelle Solomons Room, Grace Gifford House, National College of Art and Design John St. West Campus. John St. West, off Thomas Street, Dublin 8. From 7.00pm: Project Arts Centre, 39 Essex St E, Temple Bar, Dublin 2, D02 RD45
10.00-10.30am: Registration and Coffee, Estelle Solomons Room, Grace Gifford House, National College of Art and Design John St. West Campus
10.30-11.45am: SESSION 1: Basics of Behavioural Economics, hosted by Kevin Denny (SPACEX Researcher, UCD),
11.45am-1.00pm: SESSION 2: World of Work, Cooperative Board Game, designed and hosted by Michelle Browne (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD),
1.00-2.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette, https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT
2.00-3.30pm: SESSION 3: Participatory Practices and their Engagement with Urban and Digital Infrastructures and Systems. This discussion-based workshop will be led by Paul O’Neill (SPACEX Researcher, UCD)
3.30-3.45pm: Coffee Break
3.45-5.00pm: SESSION 4: Walking Tour of The Liberties led by Seoidín O’Sullivan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), http://www.seoidinosullivan.com/; and Anthony O’Brien of In Our Shoes Walking Tours, https://inourshoeswalkingtours.ie/
5.30-5.45: Jennie Moran introduces Luncheonette, a long term art project centred around hospitality and food, started by Jennie in 2013. It is a prolonged exploration into the complex alchemy of placemaking, centred around the provision of shared experiences using nourishment, shelter, comfort, warmth, light, and tone to treat places so that they feel easier for people to be in and more poetic, , https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT
5.45-7.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette, https://luncheonettedublin.com/ABOUT
7.00-7.30pm: Exhibition tour of Being Horizontal / Sínte at Project Arts Centre, https://projectartscentre.ie/. Led by Sara Greavu (SPACEX Researcher, Project Arts Centre)
7.45-8.30pm*: Performance of Manifest at Project Arts Centre, which forms part of What Does He Need? – a long term collaborative project by Fiona Whelan (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD), Brokentalkers, Rialto Youth Project and a Dublin city network of individuals and organisations. www.whatdoesheneed.com & https://projectartscentre.ie/event/manifest/
*PLEASE RESERVE A TICKET BY EMAILING [email protected]
9.00pm Move to a local pub for drinks and conversation
Day 2: Friday 3rd March
Locations: From 9.30am: Harry Clarke Lecture Theatre and NCAD Gallery, NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8, D08 K521
9.30-11.15am: SESSION 1: Theories of Commoning. Speakers Stavros Stavrides (SPACEX Researcher, LUC) and Gary Hall (SPACEX Researcher, CU). Chaired by Emma Mahony (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD)
11.15am-12.00pm: Elevenses for the “Hungry Months”. Hosted by Gareth Kennedy (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD) and NCAD FIELD students
12.00-1.00pm: Principles of Space Detection. Performance by Irina Gheorghe in NCAD Gallery. Hosted by Anne Kelly (SPACEX Researcher, NCAD)
1.00-2.00pm: Sustenance for Hungry Souls by Luncheonette.
2.00-3.00pm: SESSION 2: The 60 min Commoning Parkour: An embodied commoning experience with Susanne Bosch.
3.20-4.30pm: SESSION 3: Commoning as Care Practices in the Community Part 1: Organisations, Rosie Lynch, Callan Workhouse Union; Siobhan Geoghegan, Common Ground; Ellie Kisombe, Our Table; chaired by Tom O’Dea (SPACEX researcher).
4.30-4.45pm: Coffee Break
4.45-5.45: SESSION 3 Cont. Commoning as Care Practices in the Community Part 2: Artists, Fiona Whelan (SPACEX researcher); Evelyn Broderick, A People’s Shed; chaired by Michelle Browne (SPACEX researcher).
6.00-6.20: Our Table. Ellie Kisombe introduces Our Table a social enterprise which focuses on producing an inclusive community through food and campaigning to end direct provision in Ireland.
6.30-8.30: CLOSING SESSION: Trad Around Our Table. Event in NCAD Gallery and Foyer with a live Trad music session led by Evelyn Broderick; and sustenance by Our Table.
9.00pm: Move to local pub for drinks and foot tapping conversation