Dublin Fringe Festival 2025: Live Street Art Jam with The Minaw Collective

Sep 9

This September 6th, I had the joy of painting live at the Dublin Fringe Festival with the Minaw Collective as part of this year’s programme at The Digital Hub in Dublin.

For one day, the outdoor courtyard became a shared painting ground, an open-air studio full of colour, conversation, movement and that particular kind of energy that only happens when artist friends are creating together in real time.

The setting at The Digital Hub worked beautifully for the event. The courtyard gave us space to spread out, yet still felt intimate enough that the public could wander through, stop, watch and speak to us while the murals evolved across the day.

At the centre of the courtyard stands a tall, circular brick tower, rising majestically above the space.
I later discovered it’s the remains of Roe’s Distillery windmill. Dating back to the 18th century, it’s widely regarded as one of the oldest surviving industrial windmill towers in Europe. It originally formed part of George Roe’s distillery complex, which at its height was one of the largest in Ireland, even rivaling Guinness at the time.
The windmill would have been used to grind grain for whiskey production, so it once belonged to a working industrial landscape full of motion, sound and labour. Over time, the sails disappeared and what remains now is that beautiful cylindrical brick tower with its green domed top, a ever present relic of Dublin’s industrial past.
While we worked, surrounded by colour, conversation and the energy of the day, the tower stood quietly above us, holding its own, much longer sense of time.
I teamed up with Marian Noone, aka Friz, to collaborate on one of the mural panels, building our composition around the shape of a yin and yang.
We had actually started the collaboration ahead of the day, chatting over WhatsApp, sharing sketches and shaping a loose plan together. It gave us a starting point, while still leaving space for the piece to evolve naturally once we were on the wall.
The yin and yang form was something I had been playing with beforehand, trying to figure out how we might divide the square panel into something more fluid and interconnected. I was drawn to the way it creates movement within a contained space, allowing two elements to exist separately while still feeling part of the same whole.
In the end, we didn’t include the traditional dots of the yin and yang, just the flowing, curved, almost boteh-like form at its centre. It became less about the symbol itself and more about the space it created between the two elemental energies, fire and water.
Friz painted a lava figure, radiant with heat and intensity, while I painted a flowing water spirit moving through the piece in deep blues. There was a little realese of steam where the two figures meet, achieved with a soft misty grey spray.

One burns.
One restores.

Too much of either can overwhelm.
But together, they create balance.

Painting this piece together felt really fun, and a lot less pressure than tackling an entire panel in a single day. It gave us the space to reconnect with everyone, to move around, chat, and be part of the wider energy of the group.

Out for Pizza — I feel these event days strengthen friendships, while also deepening something creative within the group, a shared sense of respect, encouragement and trust that continues to grow each time we come together to collaborate like this.
After the painting was done, a bunch of us went out for pizza together, a well deserved ending to a day full of colour, energy and connection.

I’m so grateful to Dublin Fringe Festival for having us and as always to the Minaw Collective for such a beautiful shared experience.

Days like this remind me why I value the collective so much.

It’s not just about the work we create, but the space we hold for each other while making it, the encouragement, the shared energy, the friendships that continue to grow over time.

That feeling carries far beyond the day itself.

The murals are still in place in the courtyard at The Digital Hub if you’d like to go and see them, on view daily from 10am–6pm.