Methodology

I began working with Rialto Youth Project in 2004 and we intuitively developed an approach to collaborative practice as artist and organisation in one local context. Since 2020, my practice has extended to working on more city wide and national projects. The contexts, collaborators and thematics in each project are different and each has its own specificities, while there are some features common to all the work. Over many years I’ve committed to examining the critical tensions, the processes, the ethics and the labour of this work, so much of which takes place in private. In a commitment to communicating an ever evolving practice, I’ve tried out different registers of writing and presenting methodologies (often with different collaborators) and developed maps and diagrammatic approaches, creating resources and learning tools. In doing this work, I’m not trying to show how collaborative practice should be done, nor am I attempting to communicate a definitive summary of any process. The aim has always been to share insights from this complex relational work as a way to support and enhance this collaborative practice and support others in their practices. Here are some key works:

The River (2023-2026)

The River is a large-scale visual mapping of the processual features of my collaborative practice which engages with systemic power relations and inequalities through long term collaborations.

In 2023 in a studio at Rua Red, I began developing maps of my working methodology as an artist over two decades – a methodology born of a long term collaboration with Rialto Youth Project. Working with socially engaged artist and researcher Dr Ciaran Smyth in a process of recursive mapping and conceptual refinement, we explored new cartographic strategies for visualising this collaborative and socially engaged practice. In 2024, visual artist Orla Whelan joined the process, further refining the visual metaphors and exploring materials with which to render the information through a combination of visual and verbal means.

In late 2024, a draft of The River was shared and workshopped with other artists on the invitation of Create – the national development agency for collaborative arts. The River was then developed as a large scale drawing in acrylic on linen (6m x 2m), and presented publicly for the first time at Rua Red gallery as part of a group exhibition called ‘Together in Commune’, curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz in Summer 2025. The work was brought to life over the course of the exhibition through a series of engagements, including half-day workshops with other practitioners, exploring and visualising the methodological and processual features of their work, generating critical conversation on the labour and processes – both visible and invisible – that underpin artistic practice.

In September 2025, Rua Red hosted an ‘In Conversation’ between myself and Ciaran Smyth, moderated by Carolann Courtney, Create, where we reflected on the content and process of making The River, and our cartographic strategies for visualising this collaborative and socially engaged practice. This conversation and mapping forms the basis of a new 2026 publication titled ‘The River – A Conversation on Creative Cartography in Social Practice’ to be launched later this year. The River forms part of a long-term commitment to explore, understand and articulate the complex relationality, labour and ethical challenges of collaborative arts practice.

The River received financial support through an Individual Artist Bursary Award from South Dublin County Council, Rua Red and an Arts Participation Bursary Award from the Arts Council.

Boys in the Making methodology

Boys in the Making is a dynamic place-based programme for boys and young men, which sees groups come together over time to co-create a boy and explore his needs and experiences as he interacts with the world around him. The process involves a critical engagement with the world around us as well as a re-imagination of the world, considering how it is and how it could be.

Developed in 2019 by Rialto Youth Project and artist Fiona Whelan (as part of the What Does He Need? project), the programme aims to explore, communicate and learn from the experiences, knowledge and imagination of boys and young men as they engage in a creative exploration of masculinity and its formation. In 2021, researcher Dr Ciaran Smyth (Vagabond Reviews) was invited to work with a Boys in the Making team (Youth workers Dannielle McKenna, Jim Lawlor and Michael Byrne and artist Fiona Whelan) to help capture and articulate the  methodology of the programme, and give it its name. From 2022, the Boys in the Making methodology was shared and developed in a number of educational and community contexts across Dublin. Each iteration of the programme has been led by an orgnaisation (youth project, school etc), facilitated by a youth worker/educator and an artist, and supported through a mentoring process led by Dannielle McKenna – Manager of Rialto Youth Project.

Now Rialto Youth Project and Fiona are working in partnership with Heart of Glass (UK), supported by Create (Ireland), and a core team are currently developing practice resources that draw on the experience and knowledge generated through this programme. This process is rooted in a commitment to emergent and collaborative methodologies of engagement with young people and multiple publics, supporting complex and creative explorations of the world we live in.

For more information, see the What Does He Need? project website here.

TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation (2014)

TEN: Territory, Encounter & Negotiation (2014) is a self-published critical memoir exploring a decade of socially engaged art practice from the vantage point of the primary artist involved. It offers a personal and subjective insight into the complex working relationships, methods of engagement, creative processes and analyses from a long term project exploring power and policing that operates at the intersection of art, youth work, critical pedagogy and activism. The memoir tracks the collaborative decision making process coupled with my own thought process at each juncture of the work, to retrospectively identify the methodology inherent in the practice.

TEN has 254 pages (including a foreward by Áine O’ Brien), 50 photos, and 16 hand drawn illustrations (by Orla Whelan).

Limited run self published in 2014.

TEN was launched at NCAD on 5 November 2014 by Martin Drury (Strategic Development Director, the Arts Council), following a half day seminar Territory, Encounter and Negotiation – Collaborative Practice in a Youth Work Context, convened by Rialto Youth Project and Fiona Whelan.