Sitting together across difference at NCAD Gallery, 9 to 11 November. Artist Jennie Moran and The Bare Project invite everyone to weave a Somali nomadic “living room” together. Entry is free, and all are welcome.

What does it take to share a table with someone you don’t yet know?

Common Threads: A Gentle Festival of Welcome runs at NCAD Gallery on 9, 10 and 11 November, during Irish Design Week. Entry is free, and everyone is welcome. Together, participants will weave a “living room” in the Somali nomadic tradition. Sheffield’s The Bare Project and the Higsad Alool Weavers, led by Saada Osman, will guide the making.

The finished living room becomes a physical act of welcome, and a space for sharing.

The work grows from Jennie Moran’s residency with NCAD Field. This wild 0.4-hectare site sits directly beside the College. A decade of guerrilla composting has turned it into a biodiverse haven in the inner city. There, hospitality and reciprocity are everyday parts of nature. Guests become hosts, and hosts are cared for in return.

Moran has been studying the laws, theory, and philosophy of hospitality. This residency puts that research to work. Her focus is simple and urgent: sharing time, space, food, fun and joy with unexpected people, or those outside our usual social circles.

Event Schedule: 

MONDAY 9 NOVEMBER:

11 am to 8 pm: installing, assembling, beginning

TUESDAY 10 NOVEMBER

11am to 1pm Joined by the Liberties Weavers

2pm to 3pm On Not Doing Nothing Clodagh Finn, writer and journalist

4.30pm to 5.45pm Cord making with lucets, and incense blending Oein DeBhairduin, Traveller activist, educator and writer

6pm to 8pm Unlearning interventions from students of the MA in Art & Social Action – Not Itemised: on the invisible labour of care and hospitality, with Kelly Macías – Plastic yarn (plarn) making session, with Jen Harrington

WEDNESDAY 11 NOVEMBER

11am to 12pm Spindle spinning workshop and wool spinning demonstration Annie Gambrill

2pm to 5pm Spatial Hospitality: making a welcome policy With UCD School of Architecture students

Closing event 

6pm to 8pm An evening of music, co-hosted with the Dublin Somali community. Free but ticketed: Eventbrite

SUPPORTED BY NCAD, L’Internationale, Creative Futures Academy Communities of Practice Funding, UCD School of Architecture and The National Lottery Heritage Fund. With thanks to Foxford Woollen Mills, Botany Weavers and Avoca Handweavers for wool donations. Common Threads is produced within the framework of Museum of the Commons, a four-year project organised by the European confederation L’Internationale and co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Read the full schedule of events HERE

ENDS

Notes to editors

About NCAD: National College of Art and Design holds a unique position in art and design education in Ireland, offering the widest range of undergraduate and postgraduate art and design degrees. QS ranks us first in Ireland for art and design, 19th in Europe, and 53rd in the world. In 2026, we launched our strategic plan, Create, Challenge, Care. It guides everything we do. We exist to inspire imaginative, ambitious, and positive change. An NCAD education equips our graduates with the bold curiosity and the new thinking that society critically needs.

About NCAD Gallery: NCAD Gallery is where the College opens its doors to the city. Since 2009, we have shared art, design, visual culture, and research with the public. Our exhibitions and events bring bold and curious thinking out of the studio.

About NCAD FIELD: Established in 2020 to facilitate face-to-face learning during the pandemic, introduce critical ecological thought and action into art and design students’ learning experience, and create a hospitable setting for art and design research to meet other forms of expertise in novel ecosystems.

About Jennie Moran: Jennie Moran is a visual artist whose work explores hospitality as a creative and connective philosophy. Blending sculpture, food and performance, she founded Luncheonette, an art/hospitality project at NCAD in 2013. She lectures widely, mentors in holistic hospitality and curates discursive events.

About the Higsad Alool Weavers: A weaving group led by Saada Osman. Saada is a Community Facilitator with Common Threads. Saada helped to found the Higsad Alool Weavers, a group of Somali women living in Darnall who practise and teach traditional Somali weaving as part of the Common Threads Festival.

About Creative Futures Academy. A groundbreaking partnership between three leading creative institutions: NCAD, UCD, and IADT–Creative Futures Academy (CFA) is a new approach to higher education.

Images. High-resolution images are available for use here.

Media contact. Gillian Henderson, Communications Manager, NCAD

hendersong@ncad.ie, communications@ncad.ie