Hugh Lane Gallery and Create commission 2022 – 2024
Aine Crowley, Programme Manager Arts and Engagement with Create, Damien McGlynn, Director of Create, film-maker Jijo Sebastian, Barbara Dawson, Director of Hugh Lane Gallery, and Jessica O'Donnell, Head of Education and Community Outreach, pictured at the launch of the Salmagundi Project
Following on from our successful partnership on the prestigious CAPP Commission in 2017, and in keeping with both The Hugh Lane Gallery and Create’s commitment to principles of equality, diversity and inclusion, Hugh Lane Gallery and Create came together in 2022 with a new commission inviting submissions from artists from a minority ethnic background and/or who have lived experience of displacement and/or are shaped by histories of intergenerational migration.
Filmmaker Jijo Sebastian was awarded the commission for his proposal to foster transcultural understanding, community building and the exploration of the complexities of migrant identities through a collaborative filmmaking process. Jijo Sebastian is a collaborative filmmaker with more than ten years of experience in participatory, collaborative and transcultural filmmaking in community-based contexts. He was awarded an Artist in the Community Scheme Project Realisation Award in 2015 and an Arts Council ‘Next Generation’ Bursary Award’ in 2016, in addition to an Arts Participation Bursary (2020). He has co-written, directed and edited eight short films and one tele-film collaborating with individuals, groups and families from the Keralite Indian community and others in Ireland. Selected films have been screened at international film festivals. His practice and films find coherence in their shared immigrant-oriented themes, participatory methodologies and suburban Dublin geographical context. The key concerns that underpin his practice and current thematics are transcultural space, intercultural relations, the complex nature of immigrant identity and its trajectory of transitioning.
Jijo conceived and facilitated Salmagundi: The Project in April 2023, alongside residents of Dublin’s North Inner City. The aim of the project was two-fold: to bring a culturally diverse group of people together to make a feature-length collaborative film and, through this process, to create a transcultural community which would outlive the film and go on to engage in other creative endeavours.
Under the name Salmagundi, a diverse group of individuals, many without prior experience in filmmaking, came together through an open call to develop, write and perform a feature-length film. Comprising six interwoven stories, the film reflects themes and issues central to the participants’ lived experience, celebrating a collective voice that underscores the power of community across cultures.
The Salmagundi members forged a community that extends beyond the project and is set to continue as a space for creative and social engagement; with participants gathering regularly for shared meals, trips together to cultural events, the beach, bowling, and the theatre.
The collaborative film and a process room was officially launched in the Hugh Lane Gallery by Deputy Lord Mayor of Dublin Cllr Donna Cooney on 2 November 2024. The collaborative Salmagundi film was accompanied by a process room that documented the group’s journey through the highs and lows of making collaborative art and the challenges of trying to build an authentically transcultural community.
Jijo Sebastian said: ‘Project Salmagundi has been a challenging, self-revealing and transformational experience for me. It has activated in me a process of reframing my practice as a socially engaged filmmaker’.
Watch the film
Experience the process of building a community and a feature-length film
