Your Seat at the Table 

Co-designed by Ailbhe Cunningham, Ample Space & Leo Keller, grundfunkel

A creative, participatory workshop and exhibition that invites you to share everyday life experiences from your home. You choose the story. We supply the table.

Exhibition: 

Thursday 17th September - Sunday 27th September 

Workshop: 

12:00 - 14:00, Saturday 19th September

Artist Talk: 

14:00 - 15:00, Sunday 27th September

Although serving different contexts, both a host’s table runner and a craftsperson’s tool roll are devices of organisation and care: one brings order and atmosphere to a shared table, while the other securely stores and carries the tools of everyday making. 

Your Seat at the Table combines these two objects into a fabric-based design object. Interfacing between the public workshop and the private experience of home, the dressed table establishes a space of care and hospitality where residents' living experiences can be shared, documented and valued. 

Your Seat at the Table consists of a creative, participatory workshop and interactive exhibition. Architectural representations often fail to capture the messiness of everyday experiences in our homes and the impacts that buildings have on our lives. 

Your Seat at the Table aims to collectively share our everyday experiences of inhabiting our homes and neighbourhoods.  

Your story could be about barriers to having a safe or secure home, or about things that you hold dear and long to hold onto. We will make visible the conditions that we need to turn a house into a comfortable and safe home. 

We recognise that people communicate, learn and share experiences in diverse ways. The project offers multiple modes of participation - creative, sensory and conversational forms of engagement. You are invited to join us - to sit around the table and tell your story in a way that feels right for you. Use your voice, your hands, your ears, your heart. All forms of storytelling are welcome! 

Workshop materials and tools will be provided.

Supported by * 

Your Seat at the Table is part of a wider research project funded by Research Ireland, in conjunction with TU Dublin (academic partner) and the RIAI (enterprise partner).

Project credits

Your Seat at the Table is a collaborative project between Irish architect Ailbhe Cunningham of Ample Space and German tailor Leo Keller of grundfunkel.

Ailbhe Cunningham is an architect MRIAI and researcher engaged in transdisciplinary, participatory and creative design, evaluation & knowledge exchange. She is a founding director of Ample Space, a collaborative research & design practice in Cork city. 

Leo Keller is a tailor, bagmaker and fashion designer with a focus on one-of-a-kind pieces. They develop, construct, sew and repair all things textile - keeping favorite pieces alive or giving a second life to pre-used materials and setting those into a new and sometimes unexpected context. 

Co-designed by Ailbhe Cunningham, Ample Space & Leo Keller, grundfunkel with support from Kevin Donovan & Paddy Dolan, TUDublin. 

Film + Architecture Workshop

Workshop, Exhibition, Film screenings

10:00 – 18:00hr, Daily 18th September – 24th September

Based at The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid Lane

For AATE 2026, Le Chéile – The Architectures of Belonging invites us to reconsider architecture not as the production of isolated objects, but as the cultivation of relationships. This film workshop calls for an understanding of the built environment as a shared ecology, where humans, non-humans, infrastructures, landscapes, memories, and everyday practices continuously shape one another.

Workshop led by Sabrina Morreale, Lemonot Studio and Søren Nørkjær Bang, Architecture Forum (CAFx) with Thomas Kerr Bell. 

Guest tutors;
Dr Torange Khonsari 
Alessandro Pasero 
Docar Films - Jasper Meurer 

Films will premiere on Thursday 24th September at 17:00hr in the Festival Printworks Gallery, Q&A + Drinks.

Supported by: Screen Ireland, Skills Development Funding Scheme 

Part of the LINA Architecture Programme 

Culture Night Late - Blanka Major + Hinterland

Pálás an Phobail - tasting a sense of place

Festival Printworks Gallery, Market St, (Next to the Portershed a dó.)
19:00-23:00 hr, Friday 18 September, 2026
FREE entry – but prebooking is essential, no registration no entry.

AATE are working in collaboration with Blanka Major and Hinterland with the aim to connect food, people and place.

Architecture at the Edge is partnership with Hinterland will create a series of spaces of encounter for Culture Night, - curated by Blanka Major - connecting an outdoor installation on Druid Lane, a happening at the Mick Lally Theatre, and a culinary exploration at the Festival Printworks Gallery through the shared theme of belonging.

At its heart is an edible installation that takes the form of a Pálás an Phobail—a People’s palace—where the everyday rituals of gathering, eating, listening, and exchanging ideas unfold through food, sound, and conversation. Guests move through a sequence of spaces shaped by stories and sensory encounters, each revealing a different relationship between food, landscape and memory—inviting them to taste a sense of place. From a canopy of flags stretching across the street and a performative public interior, to solitary moments and shared tables, the evening explores how places—and people—come to belong through the encounters they foster, the stories they carry, and the memories they create.

The evening includes inputs by:
Professor Anna Davies, Geography, Trinity College Dublin & 
Michael Higgins, Political Liaison & Systems Change Lead, Bohemians Co-operatives.

Blanka Major / Curators Talk >>>

The Mick Lally Theatre, Druid ln, Galway.

17:00 – 19:30 h, Sunday 20 September 

Tickets: Free but prebooking is advised via Eventbrite

‘Pálás an Phobail - tasting a sense of place’, is part of the Culture Night Late programme, funded by the Arts Council and the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport under the Night-Time Economy programme with support from Galway City Council Arts Office.

For more details on Culture Night Late in Galway City, you can check out the @thisisgalway or @Archattheedge Instagram pages.

BIOS

Blanka Major is a Zurich-based architect with Hungarian roots whose work spans architecture, food, research, teaching, writing, and curation. She explores how everyday infrastructures shape collective life, using cooking as a spatial and social practice. She is part of ZAS*, a LINA Spotlight Fellow 2025, and was nominated for the Swiss Art Award in Architecture (2026).

The Hinterland Team are a west of Ireland based initiative dedicated to community-rooted research, creativity, and action that nourishes just, inclusive and sustainable food futures. Together with Blanka will we curate an event which responds to the intersecting challenges of climate, agriculture, access, and belonging by cultivating holistic, place-based models of change.

Faith in the Future 2026

A close look at revitalising church buildings and their curtilage; bringing architecture, traditional craft and community together to explore new possibilities for historic places.

Exhibition Open:
10am-6pm Saturday, 19th September
and 2-6pm Sunday 20th September

Workshops:
14:00-16:00 hr, 26th & 27th September

All are welcome – just drop in! - no booking required.

Taking place at Holy Trinity Church, Aughrim, the exhibition presents architectural ideas for the Aughrim Climate Action Park, developed by architects collaborating between Ireland and Belgium. Through drawings and models, the work explores the potential of the church and its curtilage, developed through Faith in the Future’s engagement with St. John’s Church, Ballinasloe and the communities of both sites.

 The project takes a close look at adaptive reuse, sustainable timber structures and the possibilities of working with existing buildings and their surrounding spaces. It considers how new interventions might support the continued use of these historic places while retaining their character, material qualities and social uses.

Alongside the exhibition, two hands-on crios-weaving workshops will take place within the church. Bringing traditional making into the space, the workshops form part of the project’s ongoing exploration of how architecture, making and community can contribute to the continued life of historic buildings.

Event Organiser

Faith in the Future is led by Beibhinn Delaney, in collaboration with Marie-Caroline Kawa, Lara Clifford & Caoimhe Walsh. Support comes from the Arts Council Project Award, Donegal Yarns & Ballinasloe Credit Union.