Sheena Barrett
Dublin City Council Arts Office and The LAB Gallery Arts Officer / Curator
Dublin
Interested in the role of arts and culture in placemaking, particularly the spaces of making and production and the potential for cross-disciplinary exchanges.
I joined Dublin City Council in 2006 as an Assistant City Arts Officer and the inaugural Curator of the newly built LAB, a public private regeneration lead project. Since then, the LAB has built a strong reputation as a venue that supports both emerging artists at the beginning of their careers and encourages more established artists to take risks in their work. I commission artists and other specialists across disciplines from astronomy to zoology, to collaborate to deliver public programmes. My role as Arts Officer involves advising, mentoring, grant aiding, negotiating, advocating for artists and arts organisations on a strategic city level and working directly in the city’s neighbourhoods to programme and support festivals and art projects at a local level. I am a founding member of Monto Arts, a network of female gallery and studio directors in Dublin's north inner city who which have come together to power change in our neighbourhood through visual art and design.