About Me

Tom Meskell grew up in Clondalkin on the edge of Dublin. It wasn't a well resourced area and that stayed with him. When he went to college in 1995 it was with a specific intention — to find a way of bringing art to people who were cut off from it, for whatever reason. Social circumstances, neurodivergence, language, poverty. He had studied craft design before that and enjoyed making things but felt it wasn't enough on its own. He needed his work to connect with people.
When he finished his degree at the University of Ulster in 1998 he went to Vermont to do an internship with an organization called GRACE. They had been working for over twenty years with what you might call naive artists — people who were already making work, already had something going, but hadn't been seen or supported. GRACE's approach was to see those people as artists, full stop. Not to teach them or redirect them but to sit with them, watch what they were doing, and help them put more power into it through materials and technique. You weren't changing what they were making. You were helping them make more of what was already there. Tom spent three months absorbing that and came back to Ireland with it as his working method. In 2000 and 2001 he brought the GRACE team over to run teaching seminars in Ireland, some of the first of their kind here.
In 1999 he began working at Tallaght Community Arts. He worked with adult mental health services, drug rehabilitation groups, schools, teenage groups, single parent groups. It was an enormous amount of work in an area of Dublin that really needed it and it was where he found his feet as a practitioner.
From Tallaght he moved west. Parade and spectacle work was taking him around the country and Mayo held him. His first major lantern installation was called Minders of the Menagerie, a gallery of giant animal lanterns made with schools across the county. That was the beginning of lantern sculpture becoming the central thread of his practice. Around the same time he got more and more involved with Macnas, one of the first community arts organization's in Ireland. He was on the board of directors for a period but the years he values most were the ones where he was just a crew member, one of the gang, learning from the inside.
The international work grew the same way everything else did, through people recognizing something in how he worked and inviting him in. Camp Hill is a global organisation working with people with developmental disabilities. They identified Tom's approach as being in step with their own and invited him to Vermont for two week long seminars. That led to a project in Germany on the shores of Lake Constance where four Camp Hill communities came together. And then to a five week residency at a special school in Pennsylvania where he and his wife, who is a puppeteer, developed a body of work together. In 2022 he made Lights in the Darkness at City Hall in Philadelphia, one hundred life size lantern figures made with the community to honor those lost to suicide.
In recent years his work has reached its largest audiences. Silva Lumina, fifty lantern figures made with participants from the First Fortnight mental health arts festival, showed at the National Botanic Gardens Dublin, Longford Lights Festival, Kew Gardens Wakehurst and the Centre Cultural Irlandais in Paris. Over 95,000 people saw it. In 2023 he was Artistic Director of Longford Lights Festival, Ireland's first large scale community lantern festival, which brought 12,000 people through the gates of Connolly Barracks. His current work Basking, a life size lantern basking shark with sixty shell lanterns, is touring now.
His work has been funded by the Arts Council of Ireland, Culture Ireland, Creative Ireland and Mayo County Council. It has been broadcast on RTE Six One News and recognised with the Culture Ireland Creative Communities Award 2024 and successive Arts Council bursaries. But what he comes back to is whether the people he works with feel genuinely seen, and whether what they make together is something that could only have come from them

CV
Tom Meskell
Community-Engaged Artist
www.tommeskell.com
[email protected]

Education

2003–2004 – Diploma in Community Development, NUI Galway
1995–1998 – B.A. (Hons) in Fine and Applied Arts – Sculpture, University of Ulster, Belfast
1988 – Certificate, Grennan Mill Craft School

Artist Residencies

2025 – Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (Jan–Feb)
2025 – Tyrone Guthrie Centre (Mayo Co. Co. Bursary Award – Spring)
2022 – Lights in the Darkness, Philadelphia – One-month residency and public installation
2018 – Lake Constance Whit Sun Festival, Germany
2017–2018 – St. Fionnán’s Community Nursing Unit, Achill Island
2017 & 2016 – Heart Beet, Vermont – Conference artist-in-residence
2016 – Ballinamore Men's Shed, Artist in the Community Scheme
2010 – Corrigeenroe National School, Roscommon Co. Council
2008 – Leitrim County Council
2005 & 2004 – Offaly County Council
2001–2002 – Studio-based Residency, Kiltimagh, Co. Mayo
2000 – Rauma Artists’ Exchange, Finland (3-month residency)
2000 – Glen Centre, Manorhamilton – Day Care Centre Residency
1999 – Glen Centre, Manorhamilton – Better to Light a Candle Installation
1999 – Virginia House, Tallaght
1998 – G.R.A.C.E. Vermont – Community Arts Residency
1998 & 1996 – Ballyconnell Sculpture Trail – Artist and Project Director

Solo Exhibitions

2025 – Basking, Roscommon Arts Centre
2015 – Puc Fada, Turlough House
2014 & 2013 – On the Hop, Ballina Arts Centre
2007 – Refocus, Museum of Country Life, Turlough House
2006 – Refocus, Roscommon Arts Centre
2002 – Personal Mythologies, Tallaght Community Arts Centre
2000 – My House My World, Rauma, Finland
1995 – Works on Slate, Festival Gallery, Letterkenny

Group Exhibitions

2019–2021 – An Criú, Inis Oírr (Macnas-affiliated artists)
2017 – An Criú, Charlestown Arts Centre
2015 – Engage Group Show, Longford
2014 – The Hermit Collective, Charlestown, Boyle, Manorhamilton
2009 – Mayo Artists, Linenhall, Castlebar & Leitrim Sculpture Centre Christmas Show
2004–2005 – Food for Thought and Mayo Artists, Linenhall, Castlebar
1999 – Brittany Arts Exchange, Sculpture Society Winners
1996–1998 – Looking for Space, multiple venues (Belfast, Donegal), and Contradicting Elements, Belfast

Installations (Selected)

2025 – Silva Lumina, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris
2024 – Silva Lumina, Glow Wild Wakehurst / Botanic Gardens Dublin / Longford Lights Festival (First Fortnight)
2023 – Dream Garden, Jackie Clarke Gardens, Ballina
2023 – Resonance, Irish Hospice Foundation Community Lantern Project
2021–2022 – Light Brigade (Longford) and Gathering in Cavan – Faoin Spéir projects
2020–2021 – Silent Answers, Covid Response – Filmed for Kíla, Whelan’s, & Westival
2012–2019 – Well Festival (multiple works), Dingle Deer, Light Catchers, Dream Garden
2001–2009 – Various site-specific environmental and community installations across Ireland
1992–1998 – Early works in Belfast, Dublin, and Donegal

Parades, Street Theatre & Events

2023 – Artistic Director, Longford Lights Festival
2021–2023 – Macnas Education Programme; Curracha Inis Oírr – Production Manager/Designer
2014–2018 – Macnas Parade Team – Maker and Street Puppet Specialist
2000–2009 – Design, Direction & Puppet Making for parades and street events incl. Samhain, Eigse, TCAC, Kilkenny Arts, and others

Awards & Nominations
Nominations:

2024 – Business to Arts Award (First Fortnight)
2024 – Mayo Person of the Year (Arts Section)
2023 – Business to Arts Award (Longford Lights)

Awards:

2024 – Culture Ireland Creative Communities Award
2024 – Mayo County Council Tyrone Guthrie Bursary
2023 – Mayo County Council Arts Bursary
2023 – Arts Council Bursary Award
2022 – Arts Council Project Award
2020 – Arts Council COVID Response Award
2019 – Arts Council Travel Award
2018 – Arts Council Travel Award
2017 – Arts Council Travel Award