International Exhibitions

Exhibiting Abroad & Hosting International Artists in the HeARTlands of Ireland

1. Bringing HeARTlands Abroad

We aim to bring HeARTlands exhibitions to a number of international venues every year. If you run a gallery or cultural space, a festival or event, and our themes — Landscapes, Legends & Love Stories — resonate with your community's identity, we'd love to talk with you about hosting us.

This works best with organisations who share our ethos: generosity over competition, curiosity over judgement, and genuine interest in what our artists could bring to your place and your people.

Get in touch — we'd love to hear from you

We're building these relationships one at a time, not through an open call. We'd love to hear from international artists, galleries, festivals and cultural organisations working with legends and love stories, folklore, myth, or the relationship between landscape, place and story.

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Verona - The home of Romeo and Juliet - A beautiful art and love filled city. Image by hias schell

The view from Corn Hill (Cairn Hill) in County Longford - The higest point at 278 meters.

Image by John Riddle Australia

2. Exhibiting International Artists in Longford & Ireland

We also welcome international artists to exhibit here in the heart of Ireland. Longford, our home, is a place of lakes and rivers, boglands and ancient pathways — small communities, and space to pause and imagine.

Ireland has always been a place of stories, carried in memory and layered into the landscape itself, and that same generosity runs through how we welcome people here. The Irish tradition of meitheal — coming together to help one another and share what we have — is something we try to live out in every exhibition and Get Together.

Visiting artists and new members who join our HeARTlands community tell us it feels less like an intimidating arts space and more like crossing the threshold of a welcoming home. That gladdens our hearts.

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Our First International Exhibition 2027

Teruel, Spain

At HeARTlands, we believe that stories travel.

They cross mountains and rivers, seas and borders. They survive in landscapes, in folklore, mythology and faith, in memory and in the stories communities continue to tell about who they are and where they come from.

Through HeARTlands we are returning to an idea that first began to take shape almost ten years ago: the creation of an international network connecting towns, cities and communities through the stories that belong to their places.

The beginnings of that story can be traced to 2017, when Longford and Ireland were represented in Teruel, Spain, as part of a project entitled 'Europe in Love' — a European initiative that sought to bring together places connected with legendary love stories and explore the possibility of developing an international cultural network around them.

The 2017 International Congress in Teruel, Spain

The ambition then was to create connections through story, heritage, culture and shared European identity.

Although the proposed European project did not ultimately secure the funding required to continue, the idea did not disappear. Neither did the friendships, relationships and connections created through it.

Almost ten years later, through HeARTlands, we are picking up the thread that was first woven in 2017 and carrying it forward into a new creative chapter.

Our ambition is to revisit and reimagine that original idea, developing Landscapes, Legends & Love Stories as a growing international story trail and cultural network connecting artists, writers, towns, cities, festivals, cultural organisations and creative communities across Europe and, in time, farther afield.

We will lead with Longfords Legends and Love Stories - both ancient and contemporary but therafter continue with Stories from the Heartlands.

We want to follow stories outward from Ireland — discovering the connections, echoes and shared themes that exist between Irish folklore, mythology, history and Christian traditions and the legends and love stories of communities elsewhere.

We are particularly interested in places where landscape and story have become inseparable: places associated with legendary lovers, ancient myths, saints and pilgrims, folklore, historic journeys, sacred traditions and stories of identity and belonging.

For us, this is not simply about taking Irish art exhibitions abroad.

It is about making connections, and developing friendships.

It's also about creative and cultural exchange.

Irish & International Stories

Warriors on the Táin March Trail - Participating in the re enactment of the great Irish Epic An Táin Bó Cúailgne one the main Irish stories we will focus on. Táin March Celebrations

Returning to Teruel

The first chapter in this renewed international journey will take us back to Teruel in Aragón, Spain.

The relationship began in 2017 through Europe in Love, when Longford and Ireland joined Teruel and other European partners in exploring the idea of connecting places through their legendary stories.

Acting then as Longford Tourism Officer, Anna brought the ancient Irish story of Tochmarc Étain into conversation with Teruel’s story of Diego de Marcilla and Isabel de Segura — the Lovers of Teruel — alongside other European stories including that of Romeo and Juliet in Verona, Italy.

The friendships established through that experience have endured.

And so, in 2027 — ten years after that first meeting — we will return to Teruel, bringing with us the work of Irish artists and creatives and beginning a new chapter in a story that started there a decade earlier.

Rather than attempting simply to recreate 'Europe in Love', we want to honour its original spirit while allowing something new to grow from it.

The Lovers of Teruel

During Annas visit to Teruel in 2017, she was presented with a medallion bearing the name and image of Queen Urraca, a powerful female figure from medieval Spain. The gift was bestowed by the Knights of Las Alfonsadas, who saw a symbolic connection between Urraca and Ireland’s legendary Queen Medb of Connacht — women of strength and authority in predominantly male worlds. They extended that symbolism to Anna and the work she was doing to bring Ireland’s stories into a wider European cultural exchange. She still treasures the medallion today as a symbol of friendship and the connections that can grow between cultures with similar values and stories.

Members of Bodas de Isabel Segura & The International Congress Association

Why Cultural Exchange Matters to Us:

At a time when our world can so often feel divided by borders, politics, conflict and difference, creativity offers another way of meeting one another.

Art has no borders.

A painting does not need a passport to move someone. A story told in one country can awaken a memory in another. A landscape can feel strangely familiar thousands of kilometres from home. A legend belonging to one community can reveal something universal about love, loss, courage, longing, identity or belonging.

Art allows us to meet not first as nationalities, institutions or strangers, but as friends connected in our love of creativity and stories.

It creates space for curiosity rather than assumption, conversation rather than division and connection rather than separation.

Through sharing art and stories, we hope to connect hearts and minds across borders and build relationships founded on creativity, friendship, mutual respect and genuine curiosity about one another’s cultures.

We are interested not only in what makes our stories different, but in what they reveal about the things we share.

Across countries and centuries, people have told stories about love and loss, journeys and homecomings, animals and landscapes, heroes and saints, the natural and supernatural worlds, conflict and reconciliation, life and death.

The characters change.
The landscapes change.
The languages change.
But something recognisably human remains.

LOVE

This is the heart of the matter.