Things seems harder now than in living memory: our working lives are riddled with concerns of precarity, hustling and burnout, and our newsfeeds reflect the horrors of global genocide, political unrest, wealth inequality, gender-based violence, and environmental collapse.

And yet we persist.

QSS studio members Meadhbh McIlgorm and Gail Ritchie join Jane in conversation to collectively explore what we can take from the here and now – ideas of agency, community, care, and resistance – to keep us going.

How can art make a difference in this moment? Why do we make and keep on making? If our work is inextricably linked with our own identities, how can we capture what we stand for within a gesture? What gives us the energy to show up each day and create? How do we keep the doors open and the lights on? And how are our efforts received beyond the studio walls?

This event forms part of QSS’s 40th birthday celebrations and is the second in a series which focuses on the organisation’s past – Una Walker’s Four Flights Up – and will conclude with reflections on the future by Dougal McKenzie in conversation with Niamh Clarke, Jonathan Conlon and Sharon McKeown.

About Jane Morrow

Jane is a curator, writer, researcher, and advocate. She recently completed a PhD at Belfast School of Art entitled ‘Precarious people, places and practices: mapping, mediating and challenging the instability of artists’ studios in Belfast (2018-2022)’. Amongst other things, she is currently Co-Director / Strategic Vision and Development Curator at PS2.