!! This Workshop is for 16 - 25 year olds,
Participants under 16 are welcome to attend if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian !!
In this workshop, participants will make, decorate and use their own working Camera Obscuras 📸 The workshop will be guided by the artist Rachael Kelly Ryder, who researches moving image, archives, haptic visuality and representation on camera.
Participants will have time to watch experimental short moving-image clips, engage in independent reflection on what it means to be seen and represented through visual imagery, and respond to the workshop using cardboard camera obscuras, which we will make together. Each participant will be able to take home the camera obscura they make.
This workshop is a space for creative exploration, learning, and connection, where participants can try new techniques, share inspiration and engage with their queer peers and allies.
Rachael Kelly Ryder (Dublin, 1994) is a visual artist, filmmaker and AHRC-funded practice-based researcher at the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) and National Library of Scotland Moving Image Archive (NLSMIA). Her research explores migratory patterns between Ireland and Britain, marginality in British diasporic life, oral and hidden histories, and the socio-economic conditions shaping
communities. She investigates these themes through experimental documentary, archival engagement, participatory methods, sculpture and lens-based media interventions. Her moving image and installation works have been presented at Market Gallery (2023), the Centre for Contemporary Arts (CCA), Glasgow (2023), and Transmission Gallery (2024). She has also delivered papers on “Archives in Motion” at the Experimental Archives Conference, Kingston University (2025), on migratory crossings and the sea at the Water as Method, GSA (2025), and “The Irish Migrant in Motion”, Museum of the Home (2026). She has been a socially engaged creative facilitator for ten years and retains a role as Programme Lead for the Neighbourhood Project with the Fire Station Artists’ Studios in Dublin. She is also a teaching assistant on the Fine Art Critical Studies undergraduate course at GSA.