Are you interested in Art & Design? Looking for something creative to do during lockdown?
The Civic and Irish National Opera (INO) are hosting a series of free online digital art workshops throughout February and are looking for interested, enthusiastic, budding artists to take part.

During these digital art sessions, you’ll work with artist, Shane Sutton, looking at ways of creating interesting pieces of digital art, simply and with the everyday tools available on your computer. You don’t have to know anything about opera, digital art or virtual reality to take part in the project. Participation is free of charge. Enthusiasm and an open mind are all that’s required.

There will be four workshop sessions which will take place via Zoom on the following dates at 6pm – 7:30pm:

• 23rd February
• 25th February
• 2nd March
• 4th March

The workshops are being run as part of a research and development process that will result in the creation of the world’s first virtual reality community opera.

What is a community opera? Put simply, it’s just an opera made with professional artists in collaboration with people from different communities. The opera we are making will be in virtual reality, so the final piece won’t appear on a stage like a conventional opera, but instead you’ll experience it through a VR headset. You can learn more about the overall project here.

If you’d like to get involved please fill in the form here no later than 17th February.
These workshops are open to anyone over the age of 18, with a focus on people living in Tallaght and South Dublin. While anyone over 18 is welcome to apply, spaces on the course are limited so we will prioritise applications from this area. We will be in touch to let you know if you’ve been successful in gaining a place on the project.

About Shane Sutton:
A multi faceted visual artist working with street and canvas art combined with a passion for creative technology for film editing, digital compositing and virtual reality. While his work has included a wide variety of media and themes, he is currently best known for his Spacer street art paintings. In 2019 he was awarded an art residency with the European Space Agency where he collaborated with scientists from the space agencies UK climate office. The final artworks were commentaries on climate awareness and were showcased at the European Space Agency’s Living Planet Symposium in Milan 2019. On March 1st 2019, as winner of the ‘Graffiti Without Gravity’ Street art competition with The Hague Street Art and the European Space Agency in Holland, he became the first street artist to sign work in weightlessness on a zero gravity flight.

Shane was featured in an article on this site a while back.