Open Minds
- Sensory Friendly Workshops

This is a free half-day sensory art workshop at Butler Gallery for neurodivergent youth (ages 13-20). In a calm, sensory-friendly setting, participants are invited to explore four portals: See / Hear / Move / Make, honouring neurodivergent ways of entering and experiencing the world differently. Through a gentle mix of activities: seeing through photography and sketching, listening to subtle sounds, moving or stimming freely, and making art in your own way, this workshop embraces slowness, curiosity, and neurodivergent, non-linear creativity.

Led by artist/facilitator Ciara O’Connor Walsh and psychotherapist/artist Niamh Fenlon, the workshop invites participants to reimagine attention as a creative act. Neurodivergent ways of sensing and being: spiralling attention, pausing, sensitivities and aversions, hyperfocusing, wandering: become prompts for drawing, movement, sound, photography, and making.

Please bring something you can use to take photographs / record (a mobile phone is perfect).

Support people or caregivers are welcome to stay for the duration.

No art experience is required, all materials are provided.