School of Thought Art Collective is a collaboration between long-time Dublin 8 resident, artist Augustine O’Donoghue and historian and educator Dr. Conor McCabe.

This interdisciplinary collective was established as a creative response to Collective Futures.  School of Thought acknowledges the need and value of working collaboratively across disciplines as a way of bridging different spheres of knowledge, to think through ideas from different perspectives in order to gain new insights and ways of working. They believe that in order to build a future we need to look at the past, that history is not linear but circular, and the future, in many ways, is old.

They will be in residence in studio 468 from February to December 2026 and will realise the final stage of their collaboration Taking to the Streets as part of Common Ground’s Collective Futures Awards 2024 –2026.

You can register your interest in attending research/events by emailing info@commonground.ie

Taking to the Streets is funded by the Arts Council’s Participation Project award 2026.

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In the past year, Clodagh has contributed to Visual Arts News Sheet and Bloomers Journal, and spoken at platforms like the Studio Museum in Harlem and NCAD. Their work blends institutional critique with care-focused methodologies, drawing on their background in community organising (BlackQueerBookclub), film curation (Dublin International Film Festival), and museum education (Studio Museum in Harlem). They are committed to accessible, interdisciplinary, community-rooted work.

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Their socially-engaged projects are developed around compelling ideas that invite and structure creative responses – ideas which allow intentional communities to grow from the new relationships formed between artists, writers, designers, community/interest groups, organisations, institutions and government. Their practice builds sympathetic, collaborative relationships with hosting environments while producing content that is socially-active and engaging for non-participating audiences. Their large scale projects have multi-year development cycles, produce multiple simultaneous public outcomes and can involve hundreds of creative participants.

Past projects include: The Social Space in Brisbane, Australia, which used radical hospitality to create a community meeting space through a free café; and See you tomorrow, at the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh, Co. Cork, where they developed a series of public actions focusing on the collective visions for the town’s future.

They were based in The Lodge with Common Ground in the Lodge from April to June 2025 on a long-term project, The Caretakers’ Residency. During their residency they met with and interviewed local community, artists and activists in the Dublin 8 area.

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Patricia’s writing has been compared to that of the famous socialist and filmmaker Ken Loach. Her plays have been described in many reviews as everything theatre should be; real, believable, provoking, healing and life changing. They have been staged across Ireland in theatres, schools, colleges, community centres and churches.

Patricia utilises the unique power of theatre to influence profound social change particularly around issues that affect communities and society in general, such as domestic abuse, alcoholism, suicide awareness, HIV and our elderly population.

Her work has made theatre accessible to all; she has accomplished this through the raw truth of her social conscience. Patricia has clearly become a voice for communities, creating a forum, where we can finally open our hearts and minds in order to speak out about issues that affect us. She has an uncanny knack of being able to bring audiences on a journey of healing through laughter, tears and a sense of connection with each other.

Patricia was an artist in residence in Common Ground while she worked on her first short film documentary in collaboration with the Women Flower Sellers of Grafton Street. 

The Women Flower Sellers of Grafton Street film was accepted into the Dublin International Film Festival 2026.

The film is funded by the Arts Council’s Artist in the Community Project Realisation Award, managed by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts.

Patricia received an Agility Award from the Arts Council in 2024.

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School of Thought is an interdisciplinary art collective founded by Augustine O’Donoghue, a long time Dublin 8 resident, and historian-educator Dr. Conor McCabe. The collective operates at the intersection of art, history, education and political activism. Following their Collective Futures residency in 2024 at studio 468, they were based at The Lodge during 2025.

Central to their practice is the belief that collaboration across disciplines generates new ways of knowing-bridging fragmented perspectives to reveal deeper insights into our shared futures. Through research and creative methodologies, they engage communities, working collectively to interrogate, visualize, and reimagine the forces that shape our world.

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Aaron has worked with the Rialto Youth Project on numerous community-based initiatives and is currently collaborating with them on contributions to the What Does He Need? Boys in the making exhibition, a major event taking place in January 2025. This ongoing project critically examines how societal constructs shape young boys’ experiences and how they, in turn, shape the world around them, with a focus on masculinity and social conditioning. What Does He Need? is a long term project by Rialto Youth Project, Artist and Educator Fiona Whelan and Broken Talkers Theatre Company.

Aaron’s deep engagement with the community of Ballymun for this work underscores his commitment to creating art that fosters empathy, drives social change, and challenges structural inequalities. Aaron’s recent projects include Stones (2024), a powerful exploration of the reciprocal relationship between individuals and their environments. This work, exhibited in 2024, reflects on how people are shaped by their surroundings and how they, in turn, influence their communities. Aaron has exhibited at venues such as Outset Gallery in Galway, Axis Ballymun, and NCAD. Following his residency in Axis Ballymun(2024) and moving into his new residency at studio 468 he continues to promote social justice, inspire dialogue, and cultivate meaningful connections through art. Aaron is also pursuing an M.A. in Art and Social Action in NCAD.

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Veronica researched with young people the development, formation and communication of their experience of living in Inchicore, where Core Youth Service and Common Ground are located. At the heart of X MARKS THE CORE, is the participation of young people, and how they believe they are seen and heard, and the creation of their cultural voice in public as a response to that experience.

Veronica was successful in applying for Arts Council YPCE funding to continue her work with the young people at CORE Youth Service with her project FIELDwork through 2024. Common Ground supported Veronica extending her residency at The Lodge into 2025.

Veronica along with filmmaker Frank Sweeney have been commissioned to respond to the archive of Common Ground stretching over 25 years. With this commission – MARKING 25 – Veronica worked on site at The Lodge in 2025 researching into Common Ground’s archive including it’s extensive paper files and audiovisual documentation of the work. Veronica will respond to the archive with a written piece in early 2026.

Facilitation, Action & LOVE are crucial to her practice. Veronica works with communities of identity, purpose, and or place. She makes work that investigates contemporary living, acknowledging the visceral reality of past trauma while always focused towards healing. Her play My Son My Son (2018) interrogating class, gender(s) and education was staged at Project, Mermaid and Axis Ballymun. She holds a B.A. (Hons.) in Drama & Theatre Studies with Sociology from Trinity College Dublin and an M.A. in Text & Performance Studies from RADA & King’s College London.

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The art collective School of Thought is a collaboration between long-time Dublin 8 resident, artist Augustine O’Donoghue, and historian and educator Dr. Conor McCabe. This interdisciplinary collective was established as a creative response to Collective Futures.  School of Thought acknowledges the need and value of working collaboratively across disciplines as a way of bridging different spheres of knowledge, to think through ideas from different perspectives in order to gain new insights and ways of working. They believe that in order to build a future we need to look at the past, that history is not linear but circular, and the future, in many ways, is old. School of Thought use a range of research-creation methodologies to collaboratively engage with residents across different communities across Dublin 8. Together and with others they creatively explore, unpack and make visible some of the forces shaping and defining our collective futures.

Their residency ran from April to December 2024 and involved workshops, talks, and film screenings. In the run up to the local elections in May 2024 they created a site-specific public artwork employing text and images on doormats to be placed at Dublin 8 doorsteps. Each doormat posing a question or opening a conversation on one of the most pressing issues for people – Housing.

In November 2024, School of Thought presented the first of a series of Counter-Culture events. This included a walk and talk event, Counter – Compradors: A walk Through the Radical Histories of Dublin 8 and a screening of PUSH, an award winning documentary by Fredik Gertten with a post screening talk by Abaigeal Meek, The Liberties SOS, Lois Kapila, editor of Dublin Inquirer, and Aisling Hedderman, CATU.

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