The Druithaib’s Ball

In December that year, the 11-member collective became the first-ever Northern Irish winner of the prestigious prize.  

The work was first staged in Belfast in 2021 as a wake for the centenary of Ireland’s partition. Semi-mythological druids, artists and activists attended the event wearing hand-made costumes.  

In Coventry the piece was transformed into an immersive installation in the form of an imagined síbín (an unlicensed pub) in which a 40-minute film documenting the Belfast event was shown. The installation, complete with bar, tables and stools, is conceived as a space where trauma, dark humour and release coexist, and where people can gather outside the sectarian divides that have dominated Northern Ireland for the past 100 years.  

The Druithaib’s Ball joins the collection of National Museums Northern Ireland, which states as part of its development policy the ambition to acquire works made through socially conscious practice. The installation is now on public display at Ulster Museum in Belfast.