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Welcome to
Little Houses

An online exhibition of artworks created during the Covid 19 Pandemic between 2020 & 2021, in a collaborative partnership between the Stoneybatter Youth Service and the National Museum of Ireland.

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This website is an online version of the exhibition on display at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History, Collins Barracks from October 2021 – May 2022. The ‘Little Houses’ website invites you to explore the artworks and find out more about the project.

Hear from the team involved

About Stoereler

The idea for 'Little Houses' came from Johanna Visser, of Stoneybatter Youth Service, who had been inspired by Dutch organisation Stoereloer’s 'Miniatuurhuis' in the Netherlands.

Stoereloer is a collective organisation of professional artists based in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. The artists created the name Stoereloer, the meaning of which is similar to '‘cool’ or '‘powerful’.

Their organisational remit is to provide art projects and workshops for intergenerational groups and through this work to bring about creative change. Stoereloer’s approach is participative, working with groups in collaborative ways, engaging through co-creation and discovery.

When The Netherlands went into Lockdown in March 2020, Stoereloer conceived of a project to connect and engage the communities they work with, and called this '‘Miniatuurhuis’. They provided their communities with bags of art materials and invited people to create "a room of your dreams".

Central to the 'Miniatuurhuis' concept was the bringing together of three to make one '‘house’. In this way, each artist is connected to others that they might not have previously met in their community.

"You will be surprised to find out who your neighbour will be inside the house. This is a unique way to bring people together through art from all different backgrounds when we spend so much time in lockdown during the Covid 19 pandemic."

Little Houses’ is an exhibition of artworks created through a collaborative partnership between the Stoneybatter Youth Service and the National Museum, through the Museum’s Education Department.

The ‘Little Houses’ project is part of an ongoing relationship between the National Museum – Decorative Arts & History and its local community, which began in 1997 when the Museum opened at Collins Barracks.