Community-led communication network
Storm Meitheal workshop
14 October 2026
Join us for a free workshop thinking from 72 hours up to 72 years into the future, focused on dream visions and world-building futures. This is part of our Storm Meitheal series testing and experimenting with commons-based practices that can be activated before, during, and after storms.
When? Wednesday 28 October, 6—8pm
It is easy to become locked into someone else's dream. When we are told that certain things are inevitable, such as climate collapse due to unstoppable earth warming, we can become hopeless and disconnected. News and social media often parrot the phrases of those who stand to profit most from climate collapse, telling us prepare for the worst without celebrating the things we are achieving together. Part of why we become hopeless is because we are made to listen only to the dreams of those who expect the worst possible future.
In many cultures and traditions, including in rural Ireland, saying an event out loud is considered enough to make it a reality. While it is always important to prepare for the worst, it is also important to take time to dream a future where the preparation was made irrelevant through direct community action. We can become so lost in other people's dreams that we forget we have the same power to dream up a future.
Artist Shane Finan and Erika Mei Chua Holum, Curator at The Dock, will lead a speculative dream workshop. Attendees will be invited to dream together, to imagine a fictional community in the year 2098 and how they have built flood defences together. We will explore human and nonhuman characters in this fiction and will create shared drawings of our collective future Carrick-on-Shannon, a place where tight community has made us all more resilient to extreme weather.
Shane Finan
Shane Finan (he/they) assembles artworks and projects from interactive contemporary technologies, found objects, and traditional artistic media. Their work is as both artist and creative producer on collaborative projects. Shane is current artist-in-residence at The Dock, and part of their current work is exploring histories of our technologies, and how their narratives have influenced our current way of living in the world.
Erika Mei Chua Holum
Erika Mei Chua Holum (she/they) is a writer and curator based in North-West Ireland. She is Curator at The Dock Arts Centre. Her ongoing curatorial research focuses on interdisciplinary artistic practice and community organising efforts that connect global legacies of land and water protectors and cultural survivance.
Storm Meitheal
Leitrim is experiencing more frequent and intense storms, with flooding, power cuts, and infrastructure damage that expose how dispersed rural communities can be vulnerable to climate impacts. Through a series of gatherings, we are testing a set of commons-based practices and protocols that can be activated before, during, and after storms. We want to prototype a community-governed approach rooted in Leitrim’s meitheal tradition of collective labour and care.
Our thanks to lead artist Shane Finan for devising the creative workshops for Storm Meitheal. This experiment is supported by Trans Europe Halles, funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union.
