Fridayfest Climate Café - October

With guest speaker Michelle Hall

Climate Café evolved from the weekly drop-in drawing sessions FridayFest, initiated by artist Elida Maiques. Since many of these conversations involve climate and ecology, the Mermaid Arts Centre decided to support it with a series of talks and informal meetups.

The Climate Café is connected to participatory projects including The Mermaid Garden Project, where local residents without their own green spaces can grow, compost and exchange horticultural knowledge in our urban garden. The focus is on medicinal, edible and native species and on the relationships forged while gardening.

Think of Climate Café as a site to share knowledge, spark action and seed future projects around climate action. Its loose framework allows alternative methods and research models. Each Climate Café we have a guest speaker and different activities, expect a lively event!

Michelle Hall is a neuroqueer visual artist and educator, working across a range of media including moving image, photography, drawing, text and performance. Her work uses symbolic imagery, materials and gestures to explore modes of healing, both real and imagined.

Recent events include 'Distinct' at Disrupt Disability Arts Festival, Project Art Centre, 2024, 'Remembering the Future' VISUAL Carlow, 2023, and '(R)OARS' solo exhibition, commissioned by Draíocht Gallery in 2022. Her work was recently screened at Living Canvas x RDS VAA, IMMA, 2025, and she took part in Dublin Art Book Fair, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios in 2022 and 2024. Hall participated in 'Creating Spaces, Communities, Experiences' at School of Disobedience, Hungary, 2024, and courses at Salzburg International Academy of Fine Arts, 2023 and 2021, with collaborative performances at Hohensalzburg Fortress and Stadtgalerie Zwergelgartenpavillion in 2023. Past residencies include Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 2018, and Centre for the Study of Substructured Loss in London, 2017 and Berlin, 2019. Hall graduated from the MA Art in the Contemporary World programme at NCAD, 2016, and BA Fine Art TUD, 2007. She was awarded the Prague based StartPoint Prize 2017, and RC Lewis-Crosby Award at the RDS Visual Art Awards 2016. In 2025 Hall will take part in group residency 'Publishing as an Artistic Practice' at the Museum of Loss and Renewal, Italy. Her practice has been generously supported by Fingal Arts Office and the Arts
Council.