About

Corks Contemporary Street Art Project

Ardú Street Art was established in Cork during lockdown of October 2020, originally bringing seven of Ireland’s most respected and renowned street artists – Deirdre Breen, Maser, James Earley, Peter Martin, Shane O’Driscoll, Aches, and Garreth Joyce – to create large scale murals at key Cork city-centre locations.

Thanks to phenomenal community engagement and support, the event returned in 2021 with four more walls unveiled by Shane O’Malley, Friz, Conor Harrington, and Asbestos. And again in 2022, with artists Claire Prouvost, Kitsune Jolene, and VENTS137.

These fourteen inspiring pieces of work dotted across the city add greatly to the cultural landscape of the city centre. They’ve spurred conversations on the ground, shared widely across online platforms, and been praised internationally in the likes of Travel US Magazine, and Brooklyn Street Art.

Ardú Street Art Project is the brainchild of visual artist and designer Shane O’Driscoll, muralist, stained-glass artist and secondary school teacher Peter Martin, and organiser of the annual Cork Graffiti Jam, Paul Gleeson. Project managed by Rose-Anne Kidney of Goldiefish Events and made possible with generous support from Cork City Council and Creative Ireland.

Ardú Street Art continues to brighten up the streets of Cork year after year, in 2023, five artists recently took to the streets for the fourth annual outing to produce two new large-scale murals in Cork city.

Collaboration was at the heart of the 2024 series, with the first new mural commemorating Tomás MacCurtain on Coburg Street, created by artists and co-organisers of Ardú Shane O’Driscoll and Peter Martin. The second new collaborative mural can be found on Harley Street, back where Ardú began. James Earley, Tony Byrne, and Cian Walker have been friends of the festival since the beginning and have been painting in Cork for over 15 years.

Download Map PDF

Funder acknowledgement:

Ardú, is a new street arts initiative managed by Cork City Council Arts Office and supported by the Creative Ireland Jobs Stimulus Package set to begin in September 2020.

Comprising of murals on city centre walls by prominent artists living and working in the urban context of Cork, the initiative will maintain public access to the arts, link to our heritage, promote cultural tourism and support employment with the arts sector during a challenging time. The initiative may culminate in an online event such as an Artists’ Talk with those involved and other supporting programming elements.

Ardú is supported by the Cork City Council and the Creative Ireland Jobs Stimulus Package, an all-of-government five-year initiative, from 2017 to 2022, which places creativity at the centre of public policy. Further information from creativeireland.ie. Support has also been provided by Fáilte Ireland

 

The objectives of Ardú include the following:

  • To stimulate jobs in the arts sector in a direct way through this initiative and to complement a programme of professional development for a broad range of artists
  • To facilitate access to culture, arts and heritage safely and in line with national guidance concerning COVID 19, particularly with regard to social distancing
  • To raise the morale of our city’s residents through inspiring, contemporary artworks sensitive the context of the locations in which they are sited and in doing so, connect people, wellbeing and creativity
  • To bolster the recovery of our city’s economy and reinforce a sense of local pride by providing an exciting offering for the domestic tourism outside of the peak tourist season
  • To model an integrated approach to place-making, support the input of our arts sector and communities into same and foster cross-sectoral collaboration within our local authority body
  • To establish a sustainable model open to development in years to come with knock-on benefits for arts, tourism, culture and heritage