For Culture Night 2025, eleven artists joined me at MyfanwyNia’s Studio in rural County Leitrim for a day of mural making. In less than six hours, twelve new large-scale artworks appeared across the windswept landscape before the space opened to the public for an evening of art, food and music.

An Domhan Iliocht, my home and the place I now call MyfanwyNia’s Studio, has been bringing people together for a long time.

The name predates the studio. My husband, Iliocht, used it for the place for many years. Rooted in the Irish language, An Domhan Iliocht carries the sense of a world or place of many different ways - a land of diversity. It suited somewhere that became known for bringing together all sorts of people, music, ideas and creative subcultures.

Long before the mural walls appeared, An Domhan Iliocht had been home to small independent festivals, parties and gatherings; events created through imagination, collaboration and people simply being willing to make things happen.

As my own art practice grew, the place gradually began another transformation.

Today, my studio sits within that history as MyfanwyNia’s Studio at An Domhan Iliocht. Rather than replacing what came before, I think of it as another chapter in the life of the place.

Over the years, Iliocht and I gradually developed the studio and the land around it. Outside the Great Hall, a large farm barn used for gatherings and events, some of the first outdoor mural walls began to appear against the wild Leitrim hills.

The very first had actually been built as a graffiti wall for Hotbox, one of the small festivals hosted here in the years before Covid. Its timber frame remained long after the festival and over time, we kept adapting it - replacing panels, reinforcing the structure and gradually learning what could withstand the weather up here.

We learnt some of those lessons the hard way. During one particularly windy Species festival, the wall tipped over in the small hours of the morning.

When the space began evolving into MyfanwyNia’s Studio, we rebuilt and reinforced it properly, sinking supports into the bank and using what we had learnt to create something much more permanent. That old festival wall became part of the beginnings of the mural space that exists here now.

We started imagining the space as somewhere artists could experiment, paint at scale, share skills and spend time together, while still retaining something of the independent spirit the place had always had.

Culture Night gave us an opportunity to take that idea much further and, importantly, to reach out locally and see who wanted to become part of it.

Having the support of Leitrim Arts Office changed the context too. An Domhan Iliocht had always grown through independent and self-organised gatherings, but this was the first time the site was becoming part of an official public arts programme. It felt as though the place was moving into another stage of its life, still retaining the DIY spirit that had shaped it but beginning to find a place within the wider arts community.

Some mural walls were already here because we had been gradually building towards workshops, art retreats and other creative gatherings. But there weren't enough painting surfaces to make Culture Night viable at the scale I was beginning to imagine.

So in the build-up to the event, with the help of Pajo Lee, Lucy Lulu, David Ballantine and Konrad Kubic, we constructed additional freestanding mural cubes around the site, then prepared and primed them ready for the artists.

The event wasn't simply going to happen in the studio space. Preparing for it was actively changing what the studio could become.

When I originally proposed the project, I described MyfanwyNia’s Studio as somewhere I hoped could eventually host workshops, retreats and creative gatherings.
Culture Night would be the first time the purpose-built mural space became the focus of a public arts event.
It felt like a chance to see what the next chapter of this place might look like.

Twelve artists, twelve murals and six hours

On the morning of Friday 19 September, I was up early dealing with one last enormous job before anybody arrived.

I had asked each artist in advance what colours they wanted to use and placed a large spray-paint order with All City in Dublin. When everything arrived, I had to work back through all of the individual colour lists and divide the cans into little kits for each artist, with the paints and caps they had requested and a respirator ready for them to use during the day.

By 11am, eleven artists were arriving at the studio and what had existed for weeks as lists, orders, plans and half-finished preparations suddenly became a one-day mural challenge.

The original proposal had actually been smaller, with nine participants alongside me creating ten murals in a single day. By the time Culture Night arrived, the project had grown to twelve artists altogether.

The group was deliberately varied, bringing together experienced street artists, painters, illustrators, emerging artists and people making a mural for the first time.

I started with a spray-paint demonstration, talking everyone through the safety aspects of working with spray paint and introducing them to the space before the painting began.

There wasn't a single theme tying the murals together. Each artist arrived with their own ideas, style and visual language and I wanted the walls to reflect that. Rather than creating a carefully coordinated exhibition, the studio grounds gradually filled with twelve completely individual artworks.

And everyone had less than six hours to make them.

As the day went on, something I had hoped for began happening naturally. People wandered between walls, watched how other artists worked, shared materials, exchanged techniques and helped one another. Experienced muralists were painting beside people getting to grips with spray paint at scale for the first time.

That exchange became one of my favourite parts of the day.

Painting alongside me were Signs of Power / Vanessa Power, Loki Pookadubh / Laura Byrne, Splink, Tarnya Gregory (Tarn), Davida Bradshaw, Shannon Kerins, Helen Chantrell, Neele Boehm, Jesse Johnson, Logan Johnson-Collins and Amanda Azbill.

Each brought something completely different to the space.

I was also attempting to paint my own mural while organising everything happening around me, which in retrospect was perhaps a slightly ambitious plan. I didn’t quite finish the gable end of the cottage, but I got far enough for the piece to make an impact and for my own work to be encountered as part of the exhibition alongside everyone else’s.

All through this, the day was being professionally documented.

We had met Lee Williamson of Shuttermaniac when he taught a videography course for creative businesses through the Local Enterprise Office in collaboration with Leitrim Design House. Lee kindly had agreed to photograph and film the event, fitting us in between his other Culture Night commitments.

Culture Night is arguably one of the busiest creative days of the year, with events happening simultaneously across Leitrim and throughout the island, so having Lee move between commitments to document what we were doing meant a great deal.

There was photography, video and drone footage throughout the day. Seeing the drone overhead and knowing that someone was actively recording what was unfolding added another slightly surreal layer to everything.

After so much preparation, suddenly the thing we had been building towards was actually happening and being captured as part of the history of the place.

The part you don't see in the photographs

Looking back, I remember the build-up to Culture Night almost physically.

There was excitement around it, but there was also a huge amount of work and stress behind the scenes.

The additional mural cubes had to be built and primed. There were artists to organise, paint and materials to order, PPE to prepare, food, lighting, music, advertising, photography and video, parking and all the practical considerations involved in turning our rural studio into somewhere that could safely welcome both participating artists and the public.

And the project kept growing.

I had requested €1,000 in Culture Night funding towards an original project budget of €2,250 and was awarded €750. By the time everything was finished, the event had cost €2,825.45, with the remaining €2,075.45 funded directly through MyfanwyNia’s Studio.

More than €600 alone went into spray paint and primers as the number of participating artists grew beyond the original plan.

It was a big leap for me financially as well as creatively.

But one thing I didn't want to compromise on was the experience of the artists themselves. I wanted people to feel looked after and to have an opportunity to actually spend time together, rather than simply arriving, painting a wall and leaving.

Iliocht took care of much of the daytime hospitality with the help of Jules Davis. They had both completed a hospitality course in Drumshanbo and had HACCP food-safety training, so the food side of the event was something they were well equipped to organise rather than it being an afterthought.

Lunch was set up buffet-style so the artists could help themselves throughout the day without having to stop painting for long.

Later, my sister Kathleen Tahany O’Hagan arrived with a professionally catered cooked meal and dessert for the artists and everyone helping behind the scenes.

Sitting down together after hours of painting became a little breathing space between two completely different versions of the studio.

There was plenty of food left when the public began arriving too, so the meal naturally spilled over into the evening and became part of the gathering.

For most of the day it had been a working mural site: paint cans, respirators, brushes, ladders and people focused on racing the clock to finish their walls.

Then evening arrived.

From paint jam to exhibition

At 6.30pm, the painting day became an exhibition.

The public arrived to see twelve murals that had been blank walls only hours earlier, freshly completed and being revealed for the first time.

There was something particularly exciting about that immediacy.

Nothing had been quietly produced elsewhere and installed in advance. The exhibition was the visible result of everything that had happened on the site that same day.

People could move between the works, meet the artists and talk to them about what they had made and how they had approached the challenge.

As daylight disappeared, the place changed again.

People talked between the murals. Children explored the space. Food and wine came out. The lights went on.

Buzzed played live and Scimmiλ of Puzzle DJed during the evening, carrying the gathering into the night.

Buzzed had a personal connection to the mural project too, as one of the band members is the son of participating artist Helen Chantrell. They were a young local band around school-leaving age and it felt good to be able to give them a platform as part of the night.

They also brought some of their own audience with them, friends and people who already followed the band, which added another group of younger people to the mix. That crossing-over of audiences was part of what I had hoped the event might encourage: people coming for music discovering murals and people arriving for the art staying for a live band.

Inside the Great Hall, the story of the place stretched much further back than Culture Night.

The large fluorescent stage mural had been painted in 2016 for the third Gothic Species festival, with help from my friend and fellow artist Brigid Smith. Another wall in the hall dated back to 2014 and was a much more fully collaborative piece that Brigid and I painted together.

Under ultraviolet light, those older murals became the backdrop to the new gathering.

They weren't new to me, but many of the people visiting that evening had never seen the Great Hall before. Watching them enter and take in the painted walls reminded me how unusual the space can feel to somebody encountering it for the first time.

The music made this new incarnation of the studio feel strangely familiar too.

Because although this particular gathering was new, gatherings themselves were not.

The site had held music, boutique festivals, parties and independent events before MyfanwyNia’s Studio took its current form. Culture Night wasn't about wiping that history away and replacing it with something new.

It felt more like the creative life of the place shifting shape again.

This time, visual art and mural making were at the centre of it.

It took a community

One thing that becomes very clear to me looking back is that Culture Night was never something I could have made happen alone.

My husband, Iliocht O’Brien, shared the vision from the beginning and put an enormous amount into making it real. This was as much something we were building together as it was an event I was organising through MyfanwyNia’s Studio.

Behind the scenes there were people building and priming mural walls, hanging lights, preparing and serving food, helping artists, filming and documenting the event, organising music, directing parking, promoting the night and taking care of dozens of small jobs that largely disappear from sight once the public arrives.

My huge thanks go to Pajo Lee, Lucy Lulu, Ava Rose, Jules Davis, David Ballantine, Lee Williamson, Noah, Konrad Kubic, Merlin Watts, Nikola Pawlak, Laura Bortolaso and Kathleen Tahany O’Hagan for all the different ways they helped us make it happen.

And, of course, to all of the artists who trusted the slightly mad idea of arriving in rural Leitrim and creating a large-scale artwork in a matter of hours.

To Lee Williamson and Shuttermaniac, thank you for fitting us into an already busy Culture Night and creating such an extensive visual record of the day.

To Buzzed, thank you for bringing your energy to the Great Hall and to Scimmiλ of Puzzle for bringing the music and carrying the gathering through the evening.

I am also deeply grateful to Culture Night, Leitrim Arts Office, Leitrim County Council and the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon for supporting the project.

This was my first partially funded public arts event at the studio and having that backing meant a great deal to me. It allowed me to attempt something more ambitious and strengthened my belief that MyfanwyNia’s Studio could continue developing as a place for community-focused creative projects.

And finally, thank you to everyone who made the journey out to us.

Fifty-seven people, including the participating artists and helpers, attended over the course of the event.

In the context of a city exhibition that might sound modest. Here, it meant people deliberately travelling into rural Leitrim, finding this slightly unusual place in the hills and spending part of their Culture Night walking amongst murals, meeting artists, sharing food and listening to music.

That meant a great deal to me.

The messages afterwards did too. People described the evening as incredible and spoke about the energy of the night, but one comment in particular has stayed with me.

My husband Iliocht wrote:

“And this is only the beginning of something alive and that will grow…”

Looking back now, I think that captured something about the night that I couldn't quite articulate at the time.

A new chapter for the studio

Culture Night was the first time the purpose-built mural space at MyfanwyNia’s Studio had become the focus of a public arts event, but it wasn't the first time this land had brought people together.

That distinction feels important.

In many ways, the event felt less like a beginning than a continuation, taking some of the independent, collaborative energy that had existed here for years and allowing it to find another form through visual art.

It was ambitious.

It was stressful.

It grew beyond what I had originally planned and cost considerably more than I had anticipated.

But it showed us that there was something here worth growing.

Artists came here and made work together.

People shared skills and ideas.

Friends and family helped turn an ambitious plan into something real.

People travelled here to see what had been created.

And for one slightly chaotic, colourful day in September, the mural walls in the hills became exactly what I had hoped they might become: a place for experimentation, exchange and connection.

When I look back at the photographs now, it isn't really the logistics I remember first.

It's twelve completely different paintings appearing across the landscape.

Artists wandering between walls and sharing ideas.

The drone passing overhead while everyone worked.

People arriving as the light began to change.

Everyone finally sitting down to eat after hours of painting.

Children disappearing around corners to discover what was on the next wall.

Young musicians playing in front of murals that had already witnessed other gatherings years before.

Music beginning after dark.

And this strange little place in the Iron Mountains, carrying its past with it while becoming something new.

Culture Night 2025 - Mural Making & Night Exhibition
19 September 2025 · MyfanwyNia’s Studio at An Domhan Iliocht · County Leitrim

Supported by Culture Night, Leitrim County Council and the Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon.