Strand A
Clare County Council in partnership with Limerick City and County and Tipperary County Councils
In the Making is an initiative designed for young people availing of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) across Limerick, Clare and North Tipperary who are not currently in mainstream education and/or experiencing social isolation, including those with disabilities, and members of the Travelling Community.
Key actions will include the delivery of creative workshop series within CAMHS settings before transitioning to local colleges of further education; building creative, social and emotional skills through hands-on making; and supporting confidence, wellbeing and pathways back into education and community participation through collaborative, inclusive arts engagement.
Cork City Council
The Right to Make: A Creative Access Project will work with intellectually disabled adults across Cork City. Through Horizons’ Suisha Inclusive Arts, it will offer a series of creative workshops led by artists in different types of art. These workshops will take place at Horizons buildings and spaces and in other community spaces in Cork.
There will be sessions where the artists, other creative people, and Horizons’ staff meet and share ideas. This will help everyone understand each other better and build stronger creative skills. Everyone involved – participants, facilitators, and artists – will work together to make creative projects and activities that support wellbeing. These will lead to an art installation that is easy for everyone to enjoy, and there will be chances to show the results to the public.
Cork County Council
Creative Spark: Cork County Youth Arts and Wellbeing Programme will target young people aged 8–18 across Cork County, particularly those engaged through Family Resource Centres, Family/Community Resource Initiatives, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) Centres, including harder-to-reach and potentially marginalised groups.
The initiative will see the delivery of structured, co-designed creative arts workshops. Professional artists will facilitate sessions to promote mental wellbeing, resilience, social connection, and self-expression. The programme aims to strengthen community capacity, support inclusion, and align with national health and creative strategies through cross-sector collaboration with health and community partners.
Dublin City Council
Stitching Wellbeing: A Participatory Creative Textiles Programme at St James’s Hospital aims to deliver a sustained, artist-led programme rooted in sustainable repair and reuse practice for older adults connected to the Creative Life Hub at Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA), alongside intergenerational participants and the wider Dublin 8 community.
The initiative responds to evidence highlighting loneliness and social isolation among adults aged 50+, positioning creative participation as a positive health behaviour.
Professional textile artists from Change Clothes will facilitate hand sewing, visible mending and creative reuse sessions designed to build confidence, reduce isolation and strengthen social connection in a supportive, non-clinical environment.
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council
Let’s Get Social dlr (LGS), making creative connections and inspiring inclusivity across the county aims to enable strong and healthy communities, enhance the quality of life and wellbeing of residents, combat social isolation, and build cultural equity.
A Social Prescribing for Health and Wellbeing partnership involving libraries and community Creative Cafés will engage participants who, for diverse reasons, are socially isolated and vulnerable.
Two healthcare initiatives will be piloted; a longer-term arts and health residency in a local care setting focusing on vulnerable adults; and an 8-week hospital-based project.
Bi-monthly capacity building workshops/networking sessions for creatives and healthcare professionals will take place, responding to the need to support awareness building, networking and training in this specialist area.
Fingal County Council
Imagine, Create, Grow: Helium Inspiring Life Through Art is a project that will support children with lifelong physical health conditions living in Fingal, alongside their families.
Designed for those aged 8–12, and in some programme strands up to age 16, the initiative aims to provide creative health supports through community workshops, seasonal camps, outpatient paediatric clinics and online access.
Key actions include artist-led creative engagement, medical-supported workshops, parent support sessions, youth voice activity, and local artist professional development.
The project will strive to reduce isolation, support positive mental health, build resilience, and improve wellbeing for children and families experiencing the daily impacts of chronic health conditions, particularly within disadvantaged or harder-to-reach groups.
Kildare County Council in partnership with Offaly County Council
How We Move is an initiative supporting children, young people, mid-life commuters, and older adults through schools, Sports Partnership groups and HSE-linked community groups.
It aims to strengthen community connection and resilience by resourcing inclusive, accessible cultural experiences that engage citizens of all ages. It will seek to embed creativity in daily life through Movement Zones, participatory design, and interdisciplinary residencies in dance and architecture, exploring how subtle interventions in public space can encourage people to pause, notice and move differently.
Reimagining public spaces as sites for creativity, connection and participation, the project promotes physical activity, fun and confidence in non-clinical, community settings.
Leitrim County Council in partnership with Sligo County Council
Minds in Making : Creative Arts for Mental Health Recovery is a project that will support adults in the Leitrim and Sligo area experiencing mental health difficulties, particularly psychosis, and their families. This includes individuals attending HSE inpatient units, and outpatient/day services.
The project will deliver a series of workshops tailored to participant needs, and incorporate engagement with the existing HSE Family Support Network to embed creative tools into established supports.
The delivery of accessible, process-led creative sessions will foster confidence, regulation, expression, and connection, and provide professional development opportunities for creative practitioners to expand arts and health capacity across both counties.
Longford County Council in partnership with Laois, Offaly and Westmeath County Councils
Older people across the Midlands, in residential care settings, and with an end-of-life diagnosis are set to benefit from the Bosca Beo project; an initiative which will encourage 4,000 participants to tell their life stories in a fun, creative and engaging way.
The Bosca Beo will be the starting point for gathering their memories, prompted by a series of questions suggested and approved by the counties’ Older People’s Councils.
The aim is to promote memory recall, improve communication, and provide emotional support and social interaction to participants in a safe, trusted environment.
This project will also contribute to the enrichment of each county’s local archive by preserving social, cultural and civic memory for future generations.
Offaly County Council in partnership with Kildare and Westmeath County Councils
Sólás: The Midlands Circle of Care is a creative collaboration, in partnership with the HSE, supporting communities across Offaly, Kildare, and Westmeath through writing, visual art, and music that encourages expression and connection.
In Offaly, it engages grieving adults through creative grief cafés.
In Kildare, participants join artist-led workshops in community hubs, designed within the HSE’s social prescribing model, focusing on autonomy, empowerment, and finding a sense of belonging among peers.
In Westmeath, work with residents and families in nursing homes in Mullingar and Athlone fosters connection through creative health and visual storytelling.
This initiative honours life and loss, empowering those at end of life, living with illness, or bereaved, to build legacy, connect meaningfully, and feel supported, while strengthening community ties and encouraging compassion, understanding, and shared resilience together.
Roscommon County Council in partnership with Mayo County Council
Creative Ageing is an initiative which will bring experienced professional creatives into care, health and community settings to work with older people over time; prioritising trust, continuity, and shared creative experience rather than one-off interventions.
Those set to benefit include older adults in nursing homes or long-stay geriatric care; older people experiencing loneliness, social isolation and restrictions; bereaved individuals and those facing anticipatory grief.
The aim is to deliver sustained creative residencies; facilitate creative programmes via social prescribing, libraries, venues and Age Friendly hubs; provide bereavement-focused creative supports/memory-making sessions; strengthen referral pathways and staff capacity for creative engagement; and evaluate the impact on loneliness, wellbeing and connection.
This two-year creative health initiative builds on the foundations, relationships and learning established through the previous Mayo Roscommon: Care & Creativity in Context project (2024–2025).
South Dublin County Council
Memory Lines: Co-Creating Autobiographical Archives with People Living with Dementia is an initiative designed to honour their personal histories through works that affirm individual identity and lived experience.
It is intended to recruit and train a cohort of emerging artists in ethical, person-centred creative practice with people living with dementia. Relationships and trust will be built via local dementia cafés before these artists undertake supervised one-to-one placements. The co-creation of original works will then take place, led by each participant’s own memories and interests, thus ensuring they are active contributors rather than passive recipients.
The aim is for these works to be curated into a community memory archive, celebrating identity, lived experience, and dignity, with a final exhibition showcase at Mercer’s Institute for Successful Ageing (MISA).
Strand B – Shared Island
Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council
Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is a life-changing disability which creates challenges that limit cultural participation, and diminish agency/voice and access to creative health supports.
Crafting ABI-lity: Connecting Minds, a dlr, Aquired Brain Injury Ireland and Brain Injury NI partnership, is an initiative which will aim to develop innovative, inclusive cultural opportunities for people with ABI and their families; promote wellbeing, voice and agency through craft; facilitate cross-border collaboration; and strengthen partnerships.
The project will involve co-design, research and collaborative planning; creative labs in the North and South; and exchanges, showcase events, public sharing and dissemination activity in Stormont and Dublin.
Fingal County Council
Weaving Worlds: Creative Fashion Upcycling Across Borders and Ages is an initiative which aims to bring together an intergenerational group from Fingal, comprised of its Older People’s Council and a local youth group, with a similar group from Northern Ireland. Participants will collaborate on fashion design and upcycling, transforming old garments into creative, sustainable pieces.
It is intended for the project to culminate in a cross-border fashion show celebrating shared creativity and cultural exchange. Secondary activities will strengthen intergenerational and cross-border connections through visits to creative workshops, skill-sharing sessions, confidence building, cultural experiences and activities to build relationships.
The initiative will foster collaboration, sustainability awareness, and mutual understanding across generations and borders through hands-on co-design and creative engagement.
Kerry County Council
Weaving Worlds Together Phase 2: Embedding a Scalable All-Island Creative Health Model for Social Prescriber Services (WWT P2) will aim to combine social prescribing and traditional craft as a non-clinical route to better health, confidence and community; scaling the evidence-based, hyper-local model.
Those set to benefit from the programme include adults experiencing isolation, trauma, and vulnerability, with a specific focus on men, older women in both settled and Traveller communities, and young mothers.
The initiative will strive for an expanded reach through roving workshops in remote rural villages, towns, and urban settings. All-island meetups will be planned to continue fostering connection and mutual understanding.
Facilitator capacity will be built through all-island workforce engagement. Health, education and craft partnerships will be fostered to establish a sustainable, replicable framework.
