Hand to Hand is a gathering of practitioners from across Ireland who practise, teach and share traditional, heritage and cultural skills.

It is an event for skillsharers, makers, builders, storytellers, educators and craftspeople to meet, exchange knowledge, share a meal together, and reflect on how skills are learned, sustained and passed on in Ireland today.

The weekend will open with a talk from Harrison Gardner author, broadcaster, teacher and co-founder of Common Knowledge. Drawing on decades of work in traditional and conventional building, community education and hands-on skillsharing, he will reflect on why skillsharing matters now, and what role it can play in sustaining livelihoods, culture and community in a time of rapid social, ecological and economic change. His talk will consider how practical skills are learned through doing and working together, how knowledge is held in materials and processes, and how making can support resilience, meaningful work and long-term relationships with place.

On Saturday morning there will be a talk from Claudia Kinmonth, Paths from woodwork to fieldwork to deskwork: how can Irish country furniture inspire sustainability? Drawing on her journey from furniture restoration and practical woodwork to academic research and museum curation, she will explore what Irish country furniture can teach us about sustainability. Using photographs and examples of vernacular furnishings, she will focus on uncomplicated, functional, space-saving and repairable designs, and on the traditions of making, maintaining and mending that allowed objects to last for generations. The talk will consider how close relationships with materials, tools and everyday objects can inform contemporary thinking about resource use, longevity and sustainable living.

On Saturday afternoon, David Joyce will present The Representation of Traveller Skills and Craft in Ireland.David is an Irish Traveller activist and barrister whose work spans equality law, public policy and cultural advocacy. A former Director of Policy and Communications with the Irish Traveller Movement, he has long worked to challenge discrimination and advance Traveller rights. David examines how Traveller skills, craft traditions and material culture have been represented over time.

To close the day there will be a talk from Aindrias de Staic, a storyteller and musician who will weave storytelling and music to explore storytelling, folklore and contemporary experience, and to reflect on how oral tradition, story and song transmit cultural knowledge, memory and values across generations, and continue to shape cultural identity and community in the present.

Participants and contributors will include Eoin Reardon, Holly Loftus (Loftus Knives), Mary Reynolds, Tom Barry, Reece Foster (Saul Forged), Reem El Rayes, Kate and Alan (West Country Willows), Llewyn Máire (Savage Craic), Terry McInerney (wagon builder and tinsmith), Claudia Kinmonth, Aindrias de Staic, and more TBC.

Panels:

Traditional Skills as Work
With Sam Gleeson, Terry McInerney, Holly Loftus and Mary Reynolds
What does it mean to build a working life around traditional skills today? This conversation looks at the realities of long learning, slow making, seasonal rhythms, and the balancing act between time, income and care for materials and practice. It will explore how people come into these skills, how they learn by working alongside others, how they teach and demonstrate, how value is understood, and how a practice can be sustained over a lifetime without losing depth, integrity or connection to tradition.

Learning through community and intergenerational exchange

With Tom Barry, Reem El Rayes and Llewyn Máire
Learning through community and intergenerational exchange: how skills, stories and ways of knowing are carried through families, mentors and wider networks, through watching, working alongside, repetition, story and shared labour. The session will look at how traditions are held in hands and voices, how lines of transmission are interrupted or renewed, and how community spaces support the ongoing life of practice.

Skillsharing in the Digital Age
With Claudia Kinmonth, Eoin Reardon and Reece Foster
Traditional practitioners have always adapted to changing cultural conditions in order to survive. This session looks at that long history of adaptation alongside the contemporary realities of film, social media, publishing and online teaching. It will consider how people have always shared skills through tools, workshops, books, gatherings and demonstration, and how screens now sit within that lineage. What carries well digitally, what remains rooted in presence and touch, and how new forms of visibility are reshaping ideas of learning, authority, community and value.

Workshops

Willow coffin weaving with Kate and Alan, West Country Willows

Kate and Alan are willow weavers and coffin makers based in Roscommon, working with traditional basketry and green woodworking techniques. In this workshop they will demonstrate willow weaving methods and talk about the role of craft in community life, ritual and care, including the making of coffins and vessels for use in death and grieving. They will also share insights into teaching and practising skilled making.

Alongside these discussions, the programme will include:

Talks and panel discussions with practitioners, skillsharers, educators and researchers
Opportunities to meet others working in similar fields
Networking, peer support and resource sharing
Exploration of how skills are learned and shared across generations
Discussion of how cultural knowledge is carried through practice
Conversations about materials, sustainability and long-term relationships with place
Space to shape and grow a traditional skillsharers network
Hands-on workshops and practical demonstrations, including:
- Blacksmithing
- Traditional woodworking
- Willow coffin weaving
- Traditional tinsmithing
- Dry Stone Wall Building and Repair
- Palestinian Tatreez embroidery

Programme Schedule

Saturday

09:30 Introduction and Welcome – Aoife Hammond

09:40 – 10:10 Opening Talk – Harrison Gardner reflecting on why skillsharing matters now and the role of practical knowledge in sustaining livelihoods, culture and community

10:10 – 11:05 Learning through Community and Intergenerational Exchange – Tom Barry, Reem El Rayes, Llewyn Máire

11:05 – 11:15 Coffee break

11:15 – 12:15 Paths from woodwork to fieldwork to deskwork: how can Irish country furniture inspire sustainability? – Claudia Kinmonth

12:15 – 14:30 Lunch and Practical Demonstrations: Traditional woodworking (Eoin Reardon), Metalworking (Mary Reynolds), Dry stone walling and letter carving (David Curtin), Long bow and pole lathe (Jack Pinson), Palestinian Tatreez embroidery (Reem El Rayes)

14:30 – 15:30 The representation of Traveller skills and craft in Ireland – David Joyce

15:30 – 16:30 Skillsharing in the Digital Age – Claudia Kinmonth, Eoin Reardon, Reece Foster

16:30 – 16:40 Coffee break

16:40 – 17:20 Celt at 25 Years with Jack Pinson, followed by a short session on what a skillsharing network might look like

17:25 – 18:15 Aindrias de Staic – Bardic Storytelling with music and song

18:30 – 20:00 Dinner

20:00 – 23:00 Open traditional music session hosted by Francis Droney and Aine McGrath

Sunday

09:30 – 12:00 Workshops and Demonstrations: Willow Coffin Weaving (Kate and Alan, West Country Willows), Traditional tinsmithing (Terry McInerney), Wood turning (Ogi Doyle), Weaving demonstration (Annie Gambrill)

12:00 – 12:15 Coffee break

12:15 – 13:15 Traditional Skills as Work with Sam Gleeson, Terry McInerney, Holly Loftus, Mary Reynolds

13:15 – 13:45 Closing Session and reflections

Speakers and Workshop Hosts

Harrison Gardner
Traditional builder, teacher and co-founder of Common Knowledge. He works with natural and low-impact building methods, including stone, timber, earth and lime, and has taught thousands of people through hands-on courses and community builds. His work focuses on practical skillsharing, resilience and the role of making in supporting sustainable livelihoods and communities.

Claudia Kinmonth
Dr Claudia Kinmonth, an art and furniture historian, worked at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum before moving to County Cork. After leaving school, she worked for antique dealers in London. Time spent in furniture restoration workshops enabled her to learn traditional woodwork, and after six years full-time she attended the London College of Furniture to develop her practical skills further. She then completed an MA at the Royal College of Art, where her research focused on Irish country furniture. Her MA thesis, Irish Country Furniture: a neglected aspect of the history of design, won awards and developed into her first book, Irish Country Furniture 1700–1950 (Yale University Press, 1993), followed by Irish Rural Interiors in Art (Yale, 2016). These publications led to exhibitions in Cork, Dublin and Boston College.

Her experience dismantling, refinishing and restoring antique furniture supported her work in the Furniture Department at the V&A, where her practical understanding of traditional materials, tools and techniques informed her research and curatorial work. Her expanded volume, Irish Country Furniture and Furnishings 1700–2000 (Cork University Press, 2020), now in its fourth reprint, contains over 450 illustrations and has also won awards. Her current book in progress, for Cork University Press, explores how Irish furnishings can inspire sustainable practice, with a focus on traditions of making, maintaining and repairing household furniture, and on the skills and knowledge that allowed objects to last for generations.

Aindrias de Staic
Aindrias de Staic cannot be pigeon-holed as a traditional Irish musician and storyteller, standing instead as a singular and authentic voice. An accomplished and acclaimed actor, writer, television presenter and filmmaker, he defies the status quo, bringing a wildly original, worldly and slightly enigmatic presence to the stage. Drawing on the history and mystery of life in the West of Ireland, and on a kaleidoscope of personal experience and travel, he leads audiences on an unforgettable journey that is at once amusing and disorienting, delightful and bewildering, and charged with an explosive, infectious creative energy.

Llewyn Máire
Llewyn Máire is a facilitator and maker with Savage Craic. Their practice in cooking and liberatory community herbalism is rooted in an intergenerational lineage, shaped by early learning with their mother, Laura Matthiessen, who fostered a deep respect for the more-than-human world, land stewardship, political organising, community care, and food as both survival and shared nourishment. This grounding led to decades of work in community and professional kitchens, from Food Not Bombs to fine dining, where they developed a strong focus on cultivation, fermentation and food as medicine.

Terry McInerney
Terry is a Wagon Builder and Tinsmith and one of a small number of practising tinsmiths in Ireland. He will demonstrate traditional tinsmithing and speak about the craft, its history, and its place within Traveller culture, with a strong commitment to passing these skills on to new generations.

Tom Barry
Retired History and English teacher from north west Clare with a strong interest in traditional growing methods that work with, and protect, the natural environment. A valued contributor to the Rekindle Festival of Lost Skills, he shares knowledge of scything, growing, local heritage and biodiversity, and passes on stories and practices that connect skill, place and community.

Mary Reynolds
Mary Reynolds is a multidisciplinary artist and decorative ironworker with a background in visual communication, design, and architectural metalwork. Her practice focuses on bespoke metalwork, including sculpture, kinetic elements, restoration, and commissioned pieces. Trained in architectural metalwork, blacksmithing, and design, she has worked across film, cultural, and public settings in Ireland and the UK. Her work is rooted in skilled handcraft and the making of bespoke work using traditional techniques.

Eoin Reardon
Carpenter and traditional woodworker whose practice centres on hand tools, green woodworking and timber-frame construction. He teaches widely and works with historic and sustainable building methods, focusing on skill transmission through hands-on learning.

Reece Foster (Saul Forged)
Blacksmith combining traditional forging techniques with contemporary design. He is involved in teaching, demonstration and community-based making, with a particular interest in how skills are learned through repetition and practice.

Holly Loftus (Loftus Knives)
An award-winning bladesmith. Her work brings together centuries old forging techniques and modern metallurgical insights to create hand-forged culinary knives, made with care and craftsmanship for a lifetimes use.

Reem El Rayes
Textile practitioner specialising in Tatreez, the traditional Palestinian embroidery practice. Her work focuses on stitch as cultural record, storytelling and resistance, and on the transmission of knowledge through pattern, handwork and intergenerational teaching.

Kate and Alan (West Country Willows)
Willow weavers and coffin makers working with traditional basketry and green woodworking techniques. Their practice explores the role of craft in community life, ritual and care, including the making of coffins and vessels for use in death and grieving. They are widely respected teachers of willow weaving and advocates for the social value of skilled making.

David Curtin

David Curtin is a Lahinch based stonecutter, stone carver and dry stone waller who has just finished his apprenticeship under the guidance of Tom Little in Kerry, 2018-2022. He was first driven towards stone in 2016, whilst living in Australia where he travelled the country building walking and biking tracks, dry stone bridges, paths and more. For the last four years he has been working with Eoin Madigan, a sixth-generation stone mason, at Madigan Traditional Masonry (MTM). Here he has explored the world of conservation masonry and lime mortar practices which focuses on maintaining Ireland’s ancient and historical buildings. David also involved with SPAB Ireland helping to spread awareness on how to maintain and protect Ireland’s built heritage.

What’s included?

Attendance to both days includes tea and coffee

Saturday runs from 10am to 6pm and includes lunch. There will be an optional dinner on Saturday evening followed by a trad session.

Sunday runs from 10am to 1pm and will focus on workshops, demonstrations and closing reflections.

Ticketing

This is an intimate event with very limited places. Concession and pay-it-forward tickets are available to help ensure that cost is not a barrier to taking part. The event is subsidised with support from the Heritage Council, and ticket pricing reflects this. All artists and practitioners are paid for their participation.

Pay-it-forward: €90
General admission: €65
Supported place: €45
Optional dinner from the Common Knowledge Kitchen: €25

Hand to Hand is part of Common Knowledge’s Heritage in Action programme, funded by The Heritage Council.

Staying with us at The Common Knowledge Centre

At The Common Knowledge Centre we now have a range of accommodation options on site to suit all budgets and needs. When you stay with us, you’ll be supporting our newly established guesthouse and be close to the action. We recommend arriving the evening before your course. You can view available accommodation on our booking page. Use the Code H2H in the coupon code box - enter the code to make the suitable accommodation dates to appear.