www.thecasementproject.ie

Award Amount: €286,868

Award Recipient: Fearghus Ó Conchúir

Fearghus Ó Conchúir is a choreographer, dance artist and artistic director. Frequently collaborating with experts from across and beyond the arts, he makes film and live performances that create frameworks for audiences and artists to build communities together. His multi-platform work, The Casement Project, was one of the Arts Council’s National Projects for Ireland 2016 and was also part of the Ireland 2016 International Programme and of the 14-18 NOW programme of WWI Centenary Art Commissions. He’s currently co-leading a PHF-funded project with MicroRainbow International bringing online dance workshops to LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.

From 2018-2020, he was Artistic Director of National Dance Company Wales. His work for the Company toured across Wales as well as being presented in Japan as part of Wales' cultural programme for the 2019 Rugby World Cup. He was appointed to the Arts Council of Ireland in 2018 and became Deputy Chair in 2019. He is former board member of The BBC Performing Arts Fund, of Project Arts Centre, of Dance Digital, of Create and of Dance Ireland. He is chair of the UKDance Network. Fearghus is one of the founding Associate Artists at Project Arts Centre. He gained his PhD at the Geography Department in NUI Maynooth with the support of an IRC Employment-based Scholarship. www.fearghus.net

Project Description

The Casement Project was a choreography of bodies and ideas that took place across multiple platforms and national borders. It danced with the queer body of British knight, Irish rebel and international humanitarian, Roger Casement. It asked: Who gets to be in the national body? How could the national body move? An award-winning creative team, a cast of internationally-acclaimed performers and contributors from beyond the arts, joined choreographer Fearghus Ó Conchúir to create five interconnected ways for people to be involved in the project: a stage performance, a celebratory festival of dance, a dance-film, an academic symposium and a series of engagement opportunities that welcomed participation by a diversity of people.

Date & Locations:

February 2016 - November 2017
Ballymun, Maynooth University, Siamsa Tire Tralee, The British Library London, The Place London, Banna Strand Kerry, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Dusseldorf, Belfast, Dublin, Dingle, GAZE Film Festival Dublin, Seattle, Lightmoves Festival of Screendance Limerick. RTÉ One, ARTE Streaming EU, RTÉ

January 2020 - Present
Butler Gallery Kilkenny, MicroRainbow London

Artists

Artistic Director and Choreographer: Fearghus Ó Conchúir

Project Artistic Team: Mikel Aristegui (dance artist), Theo Clinkard (dance artist), Philip Connaughton (dance artist), Bernadette Iglich (dance artist) Alma Kelliher (composer and sound designer), Matthew Morris (dance artist), Liv O’Donoghue (dance artist), Ciarán O’Melia (lighting, stage and costume designer).

Project Delivery Team: Cian O’Brien (Executive Producer), Lian Bell (Project Manager), Marcus Costello (Production Manager) Annette Nugent and Kate O’Sullivan (Communications)

The Wake for Roger Casement at Kilkenny Arts Festival included Simon Callow, Olwen Fouréré, Una Mullally, Martin McCann and Mangina Jones Féile Fáilte had performances from Croí Glan, Siamsa Tíre, Catherine Young Dance, IMDT, Rusangano Family, Mangina Jones and Paddy Hanafin.

The Maynooth symposium included presentations from other ART:2016 projects Anu and Coiscéim, Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones, Niamh Murphy and Aine Phillips as well as Liz Roche speaking about Embodied at the GPO and Rosaleen Mc Donagh. The British Library symposium included Sarah Browne and Jesse Jones, Caitriona Crowe, Jeffrey Dudgeon (gay rights activist) Jaime Beddard (co-artistic director Diverse City), Gerry Kearns (Prof of Geography, Maynooth) Ian Mc Bride (Prof of British and Irish History, Kings College London) Lucy Mc Diarmid (Prof of English Montclair University) Indhu Rubasingham (Artistic Director Tricycle Theatre) David Rudkin (playwright). The film was created with director Dearbhla Walsh with the core project creative team.

Creative Partners

The Casement Project was co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and the Heritage Lottery Fund, and by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Its London presentation was supported by Culture Ireland as part of Ireland 2016. Its creation was also made possible through the generosity of Dr. R. Martin Chávez and supported by Dance Ireland; Maynooth University; The Place (London); The British Library (London); The UK National Archives (London) and Micro-Rainbow International. In addition to these partners, the stage show, Butterflies and Bones, was presented at the Ulster Bank Belfast International Arts Festival. A studio version was presented at Tanzmesse with the support of Culture Ireland. The Wake for Roger Casement was presented in partnership with Kilkenny Arts Festival. Féile Fáilte was presented with support of Kerry County Council and Siamsa Tíre with performances from Croí Glan, Siamsa Tíre, Catherine Young Dance, IMDT, Rusangano Family, Mangina Jones and Paddy Hanafin. The film, I’m Roger Casement, was produced by COCO Television and presented in partnership with RTÉ.

Photo: Matthew Thompson

Future Plans & Legacy:

1. The callout for ART:2016 invited artists to be ambitious and there was no doubt that The Casement Project allowed me to be ambitious for the way I worked and for the impact I thought dance could have. As an independent artist, the experience of leading what was effectively a temporary organisation with a great delivery and creative team made it possible for me to apply for and gain leadership of a national dance company in Wales, where I could continue advocacy for dance at a national scale.

2. It was important for me to use The Casement Project as a way to highlight dance in a national discourse that tends to marginalise it. The unprecedented investment in an independent dance-project helped achieve that impact, an impact that was visible in smaller and bigger ways: footage from the project was included in the launch of Creative Ireland’s This is Ireland video promoting Ireland globally and will be used again in the State’s exhibition at the World Expo this year; the project website was archived by the National Library and won an award for its designers; the project was featured in the official Centenary publication. It was also noted in newspaper op-ed pieces about the centenary year (e.g. Fintan O'Toole in The Irish Times), none of which can be taken for granted for dance in Ireland. The project continues to be referred to in academic literature, from my own PhD and articles that drew on The Casement Project (e.g. my article in Irish Studies Review), to references in recent books about Casement, to work on art and trauma and on commemoration. These discussions allow the ideas and experience of The Casement Project to continue to resonate in different registers.

3. Because it had different manifestations, the work has been able to live on, particularly in film which has been broadcast, streamed and screened nationally and internationally since 2016.

4. The work which I began in London with LGBT refugees and asylum seekers as part of The Casement Project ( has continued since 2016 and in the past year has secured four-year funding from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to consolidate and grow the programme.

5. For Féile Fáilte I commissioned Catherine Young who was already working with a community of dancers in Kerry that included refugees to make a piece called Welcoming the Stranger which went on to open the Ramallah Contemporary Dance Festival in Palestine in 2017. To Catherine is owed the credit for the ongoing development of her intercultural work but I am glad The Casement Project ( was able to contribute to that development.