DUBLIN.- The Irish Museum of Modern Art and Grizedale Arts (UK) have collaborated to create an extraordinary new project in 2016 that examines the function of art. Echoing the role artists and the European Arts and Crafts movement played in creating and articulating a new vision for Ireland pre-1916 this project takes shape as a visual and working installation in IMMA’s iconic courtyard from 12 – 28 August 2016.

Re-thinking the Royal Hospital of Kilmainham cobblestoned quadrant as a model village, the project - entitled ‘A Fair Land’ - aims to develop a system for living using basic and simple resources used in a creative way. Todays professionalised culture has arguably moved to distance us from our inherent everyday creativity, instead promoting more systematised living, convenience and globalisation, all fundamentally based on the exploitation of ‘labour capital’ (other people’s labour). The ambition with this new project is to create a complete living system that is elemental, immediate and sustainable based on your own individual and collaborative labour. In doing so, A Fair Land will create a model for a way to live, envisaged, enabled and operated by a collective creative vision which enhances dignity and self-determination and looks at how that that can be delivered through creativity - an inherent human function. A Fair Land argues that the use of creativity in the everyday is a means to enable change and empowerment.

The project is envisioned as a kind of way station, creating an instant no-frills system that acts as an empowering opportunity to re-educate, re-engage and re-vision from both a personal and societal perspective, be you war refugee, economic migrant, downsizer, opt-outer, affluence escapee or Brexiteer. The core function of the project is an ongoing education where the system itself is the school. To this end a number of artists will put forward their visions for education drawn from ‘village’ resources.

A Fair Land has been developed by a wide range of people, including artists and creative practitioners, with the aim of making a new vision for a functioning future society. Each day the village will offer its visitors opportunities to eat, make, think, or trade – and through that process to copy, assimilate and teach. With a focus on creating objects that are useful, desirable and achievable, A Fair Land will present an active and tangible representation of the place of creativity in society, creating a space for families, friends and strangers to gather, get involved, and experience alternative perspectives on living.

Artists and Collaborators include: Artists and collaborators include: Eavan Atkin / Samuel Bishop / Kat Black / Bluebell Youth Projects / Tania Bruguera / Rhona Byrne / Marcus Coates / Common Ground / Emily Cropton / CREATE / Coniston village building team / Michelle Darmody / Eoin Donnelly / Vanessa Donoso Lopez / Drew and Middori / Firestation / Motoko Fujita / Ryan Gander / Liz Gillis / Nicola Goode / Irish Architecture Foundation / Brenda Kearney / Suzanne Lacy / Renzo Martens/ Jonathan Meese / Meg Narongchai / Deirdre O’Mahony / Seodín O’Sullivan / Debbie Paul / Rialto Youth Projects / Niamh Riordan / Kirsty Roberts / Katie Sanderson / Sarah Staton / St. Andrews Community Centre / Francesca Ulivi / Miranda Vane / Fiona Whelan / public works / NÓS workshop / NVA / Somewhere / Sweet Water Foundation / Villagers from the Swiss village of Leytron / Tom Watt & Tanad Williams, and many more.