Roots 2026 Artist Residencies Announced
Roots Residencies Announced
In December 2025, Siamsa Tíre announced ‘Roots’ a new artist residency programme to be launched in 2026, dedicated to supporting professional artists across all disciplines.
Whether working in theatre, dance, music, literature, visual arts, circus, digital innovation, or interdisciplinary practice, the Roots residency offers artists the time, space, and resources needed to cultivate new ideas in a nurturing, artist-centred environment.
Applications were assessed based on: Artistic Quality, Feasibility, Professional Development, Engagement and Alignment with Values. There was an incredible response to the call-out for submissions and we are delighted to announce the names of the selected artists below.
The three Roots residencies for our Established Artist category are awarded to:
Kelly Keesing – an Australian–Irish contemporary dance artist and emerging choreographer based in Ireland. Following an international performing career with companies including Ballet National de Marseille (LA)Horde, Bern Ballett and Ballett Theater Basel, she is now developing her choreographic practice through collaborative dance-theatre works and working with a range of interdisciplinary artists. Speak to Me explores what it means to inhabit the same moment yet carry entirely different inner worlds. A sound that feels like freedom to one may hold grief for another. It asks how we stay human beside each other in the dark.
Roots residency work: Kelly will continue developing the dance-theatre work alongside collaborators Ben Sullivan and Saoirse Lambkin O’Kane, building on their Spring research residencies at Orsolina28 in Italy and Shawbrook Residential in Ireland.
Dr Victoria Kennefick – a poet, writer and teacher based in Tralee, Co. Kerry. Her debut poetry collection, Eat or We Both Starve (Carcanet Press, 2021), won the Seamus Heaney First Collection Poetry Prize and the Dalkey Book Festival Emerging Writer of the Year Award. It was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize, the Costa Poetry Book Award and the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. Her second collection, Egg/Shell (Carcanet Press, 2024) was a Poetry Book Society Choice for Spring 2024 and won the Farmgate Café National Poetry Award 2025. She was an Arts Council of Ireland/UCD Writer in Residence and Poet in Residence at the Yeats Society Sligo in 2023. In 2024, she was Cork County Council Arts Office Writer in Residence. Last year she was appointed as the Arts Council of Ireland/Trinity College Dublin Writer Fellow and a Poet in Residence at the Queensland Writers Centre, Brisbane.
Roots residency work: Victoria will complete her third book-length collection of poems which explores the experience of being confronted by love in all its forms, particularly new and intense romantic love after loss, trauma and divorce. She aims to devise and perform an excerpt from the book as a one-woman show as well as offering a creative writing workshop based around the themes of the collection. She is very grateful for this exciting opportunity and honoured to be part of the Siamsa Tíre community in 2026.
Alma Kelliher – An award winning composer, sound designer and musician. Alma works with dance, theatre, film, music, circus and live art, always blurring the lines between music and sound design.
Alma has composed for numerous short films including Naked Lights (Jeda De Brí), The Island (Two Sparks), The Painted Man (Dan Colley), I Am Roger Casement (Dearbhla Walsh and Fearghus Ó Conchúir). Favourite projects for stage include The Casement Project (Fearghus Ó Conchúir), Very Old Man With Enormous Wings (Dan Colley), riverrun (Olwen Fouéré – Irish Times Theatre Award winner Best Sound Design), and The Elephantom (National Theatre UK and West End). She is a company artist with THIS IS POP BABY, and created the music for their smash hit shows RIOT and WAKE. She is an accomplished session musician, working with many of Ireland’s major acts including Lisa Hannigan, Bell X 1, The Coronas and Moncrieff. She releases solo music as electro-folk act Lux Alma and created To The Sea with support from Siamsa Tíre in 2021.
Roots residency work: Alma will be focussing on singing. A longtime professional singer in the pop and contemporary scene, she’ll be working with acclaimed Corca Dhuibhne singer Pauline Scanlon . This will culminate in a performance of music old and new, where Alma will tie together Lux Alma originals with some of the songs of West Kerry.
The two Roots residencies for our Emerging Artists category are awarded to:
Clodagh Healy – a playwright and poet whose work is inspired by the mythical and everyday happenings of Irish life. A graduate of Creative Writing from University College Dublin (UCD) in 2023, she earned an MFA in Playwriting from The Lir Academy at Trinity College Dublin (TCD) in 2025. Most recently, her play Fermenting was selected for a dramatic reading as part of The New Theatre’s New Writing Week 2026.
Roots residency work: Clodagh will further develop her full-length play Fermenting, recently featured as part of The New Theatre’s Development Week. The funding and dedicated workspace provided through the residency will allow her to refine the dramatic text in collaboration with actors and director Zia Basbaum. The multifaceted support offered by Siamsa Tíre will play an important role in shaping the next stage of the work and supporting its progression towards full production.
Caoimhe O’ Farrell – a theatre maker, director and facilitator based between Dublin and Kildare, creating work that seeks to forge meaningful connections between artists, audiences and communities. A 2024 graduate of Drama and Theatre Studies at Trinity College Dublin, Caoimhe is Co-Director and Founder of LEGROOM Collective and Associate Artistic Director of PlayActing Youth Theatre in Celbridge.
Their practice centres on socially engaged, collaborative theatre, often developed in non-traditional or site-specific settings. They are particularly interested in work that actively invites audiences into the experience, whether through direct participation or by engaging with issues that resonate with and impact the communities involved.
The Shakey-Makey is a process-led residency developing a sensory, immersive theatre work exploring stimming, suppressed physical language, and neurodivergent imagination. Rooted in a childhood physical stim, it asks what is lost when bodies are trained to behave “normally,” and how returning to self-regulating movement might reopen access to play and care.
Roots residency work: Caoimhe will experiment with audience sensory agency, inviting each person to choose how they experience sound, texture, and viewpoint.
