littletinySPACE2

Following our intensive artist incubator littletinySPACE in 2023, Anna has curated four mini-R&D projects inspired by and to be created by our eight wonderful interdisciplinary littletinySPACE artists.

These four diverse projects will take place in Dublin, Sligo, Belfast and Galway and each of them will continue to connect up with Anna and with reknowed early years research scientist, Dr Suzanne Zeedyk, dramaturg Hanna Slattne, producer Ashley Smyth and with tiny creative consultants in their own locations.

Here’s a glimpse of these exciting projects in the artists’ own words:

Miriam Needham & Diviane Helena

We will use our R&D to explore how dance improvisation can facilitate space for connection with babies. We are working towards making an interactive installation that includes dance improvisation as part of its world. We want to create tactile experiences and space for play between baby and dancer. Thematically, our starting point is mycelium – the underground networks that live in forests.

Shannon Yee
collaborating with Cat Barter and Vicky Langan

I’d love to collaborate with parent support groups to empower caregivers to take mundane caretaking routines (getting dressed, feeding, washing, strapped into buggy, etc) that are done multiple times a day and heighten them to create mini-moments of connection. Using the objects from these routines as props (such as baby wipes, socks, buckles, baby bags, etc) I’d like to collaborate with them to explore how these simple microshifts in attention and the use of play can subtly and simply create opportunities to deepen their relationship with their baby.  I’d like to focus on how small and simple, yet powerful, these tiny moments of enlivened connection can be, particularly given how screens dominate adults’ attention and how babies are prematurely given screens during these crucial formative early years.

Jane Cassidy, Rocio Dominguez, Vicky Langan and James Riordan

A multi-sensory performance and installation using light, sound, movement and lots of water continuing the initial exploration that the group began in littletinySPACE1. Together we will explore the mesmeric, hypnotic and fluid qualities of this element with our young audience.

Grainne O’Carroll

The initial idea is to spend time in a fully equipped gymnastics hall in 2023, investigating themes of embodiment and play through multiple lenses (such as pedagogical, corporeal etc) and media. This action-based and site-specific research might include building soft constructions, movement-games, costume ideas, lighting effects and collaboration with others.
I’m interested in how our surroundings prompt, move and change us, and thus, how we can create spaces that act as a springboard. My idea is to investigate developing a work that exists as an installation and theatre-set, brought to life with a programme of events for specific audiences from babies and their caregivers to people with complex needs. At present this project is approaching the “don´t touch” enigma installed in a gallery/museum.