The workshops offered by Elida Maiques tend to run parallel to her art practice and research. Over the years she has worked with:
- Fighting Words (co-designing their first comic book workshop with Paddy Lynch, Phil Barrett and Orla Lehane)
- DLR-Rathdown Libraries (monster doodles & a small willow weaving project)
- Wicklow Libraries (comic book clubs, monster doodles, activities connected to their Community Seed Ark), RADE (comic book workshops with people in recovery)
- Instituto Cervantes (drawing-based & collage activities)
- Marino College (comics, sequential art & drawing)
- Ballyfermot Collete (comics, sequential art & drawing)
- New Ross Piano Festival (co-designing a font family with a group of children)
- the Mermaid Arts Centre (Fridayfest drawing circle)
- and quite a few more…
Evolving from Fridayfest, a drawing circle at the Mermaid Arts Centre, Climate Café is a space to share knowledge, spark action and seed future projects around climate action and sustainable arts practice. Each session has a guest speaker and different activities, with Maiques as moderator; organised by the Mermaids’s participation producer Danielle Lynch. These tend to be lively events where the audience may be drawing as they listen and converse with the guest speaker.
Bray Library Comic Clubs include sessions facilitated by Elida Maiques. These include theoretical and practical learning. Some of the material outcomes of the comic clubs are a series of zines, scripted and drawn by participants, published by Bray Library, and this library card. The card design includes work by the participants in the Library Comics Clubs. Some of non-tangible outcomes are the existence of a local comics scene of very young artists, who meet regularly and are in the habit of supporting each other as artists. Other non-tangible but very real outcomes in the participants are improved literacy, confidence, self-discipline and strengthened health, including mental health.
Workshops
- Moss Collective Open Studio: Rock Paper Stitch. IMMA Earth Rising 2024.Workshop series at IMMA cultivating thinking with our hands, slow conversation, connecting crafts, science and arts.
- Community Seed Ark – Seed Librarian at Bray LibraryInitiated by artist Aga Kowalska, currently curated by Elida Maiques. Bray Library, County Wicklow, since 2022
- The Sally Garden (IMMA)Living sculpture planted through a series of workshops. Curated by Julia Moustacchi & Siobhán Mooney, IMMA, Dublin, October 2022
- TaggedPerformance and Workshop. Curated by Second Collective. Vault Studios, Belfast, March 2022