An immersive event, featuring performances by Seán MacErlaine and Tomoko Sauvage, Dan Trueman, and Benjamin Dwyer, as well as contributions by Garth Knox, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Fiona Hallinan, and Dr Jonathan C.Creasy.
Distinctive Repetition presents
‘To Be a Part of Something’.
There are certain projects where close collaboration and symbiosis are not just a method, but a necessity. Visual communication for musicians and storytellers is one of the clearest examples of this, and Distinctive Repetition has been profoundly privileged to work with some of the finest contemporary musicians in Ireland and abroad. These projects are always a labour of love, a venture into new territories, with new languages learned and sometimes invented along the way. During this immersive event, we will be joined by a selection of musicians, publishers, and artists, connected through their engagement with the practice of Irish design.
An exploration of boundaries (and their blurring), we will illuminate the processes and relationships that enable us to communicate visually about sound and music, revealing design as complementary, as a tool of translation, and an artistic expression in its own right.
5:30pm – 6:15pm
Drinks reception
6:15pm – 7:15pm
Design Diplomacy, Australia and Ireland
Anna Sutcliffe, Irish Designer
Banjo Beale, Australian Designer
Anna Sutcliffe, Irish Designer
Anna Sutcliffe is the founder of House of Achill, a design studio creating unique products and bespoke garments inspired by the landscapes and heritage of Achill Island and Ireland. With a focus on using Irish materials and local production, Anna’s work celebrates contemporary creativity rooted in tradition. The playful yet thoughtful designs have been recognised with a nomination in the Irish Country Magazine Craft Awards, and collaborations include designing for Mucros Weavers of Killarney.
Beyond the studio, Anna is dedicated to strengthening Ireland’s craft and design communities. She serves as Chairperson of the Island Guild, a new initiative representing makers on Ireland’s offshore islands, and works as a Development Officer for the Mayo and Donegal offshore islands with Comhar na nOileán, supporting cultural and economic sustainability.
Bridging design, community, and place, Anna brings a perspective that connects local craft with global conversations.
Banjo Beale, Australian Designer
Banjo Beale is an Australian designer, author and TV presenter who has made the remote Scottish islands his home. After leaving a career in advertising in Australia, he travelled the world before settling on the Isle of Mull with his partner Ro. There, Banjo embraced island life and developed a resourceful, sustainable design philosophy rooted in repurposing and creativity with whatever materials are at hand.
Banjo rose to prominence after winning the BBC’s Interior Design Masters and went on to front Designing the Hebrides, his BAFTA award winning BBC series that follows his inventive makeovers of lighthouses, castles and bothies across Scotland’s rugged island landscapes. Banjo is also the host of Scotland’s Home of the Year on BBC Scotland, travelling from the city to the Highlands and islands. His book Wild Isle Style continues this ethos, celebrating design that is characterful, sustainable and deeply inspired by place.
In 2025, Banjo and Ro took on their boldest challenge yet, relocating to the tiny community owned Isle of Ulva, signing a rent and repair lease, investing their life savings to transform a crumbling mansion into their home and a boutique retreat. Their journey is being filmed for a new BBC series, The Grand Island Hotel, capturing the trials and triumphs of reimagining heritage architecture in one of Scotland’s wildest and most remote locations.
7:15pm – 7:30pm
Interval
7:30pm – 8:30pm
Keynote
Distinctive Repetition
Established by Rossi McAuley in 2012, Distinctive Repetition is a Dublin-based design studio with a deep-rooted commitment to culture, creativity, and community. Highly awarded for its work, the studio has been honoured to be recognised across numerous disciplines in the annual ICAD Awards (Institute of Creative Advertising and Design), has received various 100 Archive selections since its inception, and most recently was awarded on a European level at the ADCE* in 2024.
Our practice is grounded in collaboration, and we work closely with clients from initial concept to final execution, ensuring each project is resonant, relevant, and strategically sound. We seek to make the abstract tangible and to communicate remarkable ideas, no matter how big or small. We believe in design that tells stories and shifts perspectives, and we’re passionate about working with those who share that vision. We make Time Machines, so we can communicate the best of who we are to people we will never meet.
Performers
Dan Trueman, Performer – Musician and Composer
Dan Trueman is a musician: a fiddler, a collaborator, a teacher, a developer of new instruments, a composer of music for ensembles of all shapes and sizes.
He has worked with ensembles such as So Percussion, the PRISM Quartet, Eighth Blackbird, Gallicantus, the JACK Quartet, as well as individuals like scientist Naomi Leonard, choreographer Rebecca Lazier, poet Paul Muldoon, director Mark DeChiazza, fiddler Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, guitarist/songwriter Monica Mugan, and many others. Dan is also a Professor of Music and Director of the Princeton Sound Kitchen at Princeton University.
Benjamin Dwyer, Performer – Musician, Composer and Researcher
Benjamin Dwyer is a world renowned classical guitarist, composer, educator, researcher, and improvising musician. While he excels in each of these specific disciplines, it is in the dynamic and interanimating combination of them that defines his philosophy as an artist-educator.
He is also deeply committed to cross-disciplinarity and brings his creative musical energies into innovative collaborations with dance, film, theatre, literature and education. At the core of his philosophy is the belief that challenges, be they socio-cultural, educational, or political, can no longer be solved by any single approach or method. Dwyer is an elected member of Aosdána (the Irish Government-sponsored Affiliation of Creative Artists), an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London (ARAM), and a recipient of the Villa-Lobos Centenary Medal (Brazilian Government).
Seán Mac Erlaine, Performer – Musician, Composer and Mastering Engineer
Seán Mac Erlaine is a composer, musician and mastering engineer. Recognised as one of Ireland’s most forward-thinking creative musicians, he has worked with many leading lights of music today.
Seán’s work intersects folk, free improvisation, jazz, experimental and traditional music. Seán tours and works internationally with a hugely diverse range of musicians, and has performed with leading musical figures including Jan Bang, Barry Adamson, David Toop, Ernst Reijseger, Jennifer Walshe, The Smith Quartet, Jeff Ballard, Hayden Chisholm, Eivind Aarset, Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Valgeir Sigurðsson, Iarla O’Lionaird, Maeve Gilchrist, Erik Friedlander, Damo Suzuki and many more. He has also performed as a special guest with Detroit techno legends Underground Resistance and The Gloaming with Bill Frisell.
Tomoko Sauvage, Performer – Musician and Composer
Tomoko Sauvage is a Paris-based Japanese composer and artist who is best known for her long-time musical and performance practice on her original instrumentarium assembling water, ceramics and electronics. She animates the inanimate through tuning water and vessels, making them vibrate and magnifying their tiny sounds that are otherwise quasi-inaudible.Her work centres on the tactile materiality of vibrant objects, metaphorical listening and the use of chance as a compositional method. For two decades, she has been performing internationally at institutions and festivals such as Barbican Centre (London), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Maerz Musik (Berlin), Musée d’art moderne (Paris), Haus der Kunst (Munich), Nyege Nyege Festival (Uganda) and Wonder Cabinet (Palestine). Her installation and video works have been shown at Sharjah Art Foundation and Portland Institute for Contemporary Art.
Contributor
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Contributor – Musician and Composer
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh makes music on a 10-string fiddle called the hardanger d’amore, and travels the world as a solo musician, in duos with Dan Trueman, Mick O’Brien and Brendan Begley, and as a member of ‘The Gloaming’ and ‘This is How we Fly’.
He also uses live processing on stage, sending the sound of his fiddle through code he writes in a programming language called ChucK. He has had the extraordinary pleasure of performing on some of the most beautiful stages in the world, including the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Albert Hall and Carnegie Hall, although some of his favourite performances have been much more intimate and ephemeral events, special one-off things invented by friends.
Speakers
Rossi McAuley, Speaker – Graphic Designer
Rossi McAuley is the founder and principal designer at Distinctive Repetition. His practice is grounded in collaboration, and he works closely with clients from initial concept to final execution, ensuring each project is resonant and relevant.
Over the years, Rossi has had the privilege of working with a diverse array of clients, specifically with artists and musicians, and his work in this area has been highly awarded. With a strong interest in education, he has served as an ICAD Upstarts mentor and a supervisor for Masters in Communications programme at the National College of Art and Design. He has served on both ICAD’s management and executive boards, and held the position of president for three years during the global pandemic.
Jonathan C. Creasy, Speaker – Writer, Director, Producer, and Publisher
Jonathan C. Creasy is an award-winning writer, director, producer, publisher, and educator. He is the recent recipient of both Film and Literature Bursaries from the Arts Council of Ireland, an artist residency in the Centre Culturel Irlandais, and a Creative Fellowship from Harvard University.
Creasy is founder and publisher at New Dublin Press and the new imprint, Writing Ireland. He is co-founder and director of Miracle Pictures, an independent Irish film and tv production company. His writing has appeared in venues including The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Poetry Ireland, and The Paris Review. He has books published by New Directions and Dalkey Archive Press.
Creasy holds a PhD in English from Trinity College Dublin. He serves on the Board of Directors of Publishing Ireland, and he teaches in the Mary Lavin Centre for Creative Writing in University College Dublin.
Fiona Hallinan, Speaker – Artist, Researcher and Filmmaker
Fiona Hallinan is an artist, researcher, filmmaker and, alongside curator Kate Strain, co-founder of the Department of Ultimology, based between Brussels, Belgium and Cork, Ireland.
Her doctoral research at LUCA School of Arts, KU Leuven explores the coming-into-being of Ultimology, the study of that which is dead or dying (death here encompassing both the end of life and the passing into irrelevance, redundancy or extinction of material and immaterial entities), as a tool for transformative discourse. She is interested in themes of hospitality, traces, thresholds, care and critical pedagogy, and often works with food as part of her practice, cooking and organising meals. She has presented work in a number of international contexts, including at IMMA, Kerlin Gallery, the John Nicholas Brown Centre for Public Humanities at Brown University and Grazer Kunstverein.
8 (4 Stalls level + 4 Balcony level) • Suitable for All Ages
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