Panel Moderator: Rod Stoneman
Rod Stoneman was Director of the Huston School of Film & Digital Media at the University of Galway. Before that he was CEO of Bord Scannán na hÉireann / the Irish Film Board until September 2003 and previously a Deputy Commissioning Editor in the Independent Film and Video Department at Channel 4 Television in the United Kingdom. He has made a number of documentaries, including Ireland: The Silent Voices, Italy: the Image Business, 12,000 Years of Blindness and The Spindle, and has written extensively on film and television. He is the author of Seeing is Believing: The Politics of the Image; Chávez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.Maria Molloy
Our panelists included:
Maria Molloy
Maria Molloy is Vice-Chairperson of the AMACH! LGBT+ Galway. As well as a background in science and healthcare management, Maria holds a Certificate in Family and Community Studies, University of Galway. She is also a board member of LGBT Ireland, Sexual Health West and Saolta Arts. Maria has volunteered for several charities over the years but her work with AMACH and the opening of Teach Solais LGBT+ Resource Centre in 2017 until it closed in 2020 has been one of her proudest times within the volunteer sector. Now that AMACH looks to re-open a bigger and better Resource Centre, we hope that as well as it being a health and wellbeing hub, the centre will be, once again a creative place for culture and arts forthe LGBT+ community within this region.
Alan Phelan
Alan Phelan is an artist who works in film, sculpture, museum interventions, public art and collaborations with other artists, writers and curators. All of these elements inform and contribute to an interest in the narrative potential of an artwork. Narrative is explored through historical events, ideas, things, and places as well as through their fictional counterparts. Recent film works include Foly & Diction, 2021 made for the RHA Dublin and shown in Void Derry, CCI, Paris; Our Kind, 2016 made for the Hugh Lane Gallery and also shown in Oslo, Bergen, Derry, Belfast and Carlow where it won the Hotron Éigse Art Prize; Pantone 2685, 2016 made for EVA International; and Edward & Arlette, 2014 made for Golden Thread Gallery and shown in Dublin, Stockholm, and Treignac Projet, France.
Jamie Bigley
Jamie Bigley is an artist, teacher, and researcher from originally from County Tyrone, now based in Galway. They are a graduate of the MA in Drama and Theatre Studies at University of Galway and will soon complete their PhD thesis which looks at how contemporary queer performance may challenge and/or reaffirm hegemonic understandings and practices of resilience. They have delivered papers in Reykjavik and Galway on their research, as well as held an in-conversation event in 2021 with Philly McMahon (THISISPOPBABY) on the future of queer performance in Ireland. They have worked with Galway Theatre Festival as a member of their programming committee and as the Coordinator of the Visual Arts Invigilation Programme for Galway International Arts Festival.
