“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower” Steve Jobs NUI Galway in partnership with Blackstone LaunchPad hosted its inaugural Innovation at Play Symposium, today (26 October). The one day experiential symposium focused on exploring play for the purpose of innovation and featured award winning game designer, Brenda Romero, and astrophysicist, Dr Iain MacLaren, Director of CELT at NUI Galway. The symposium also featured a spellbinding one woman live interactive performance by Ada.Ada.Ada that told the story of Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and the world’s first computer programmer. Using an LED dress and wearable technology operated live on stage by performance artist and technology professional Zoe Philpott, the show aims to inspire future generations to follow in Lovelace’s footsteps and push boundaries. Offering a series of workshops throughout the day, the symposium created a time-out for people to pause, reflect and play, and to think about how study and work can be enhanced by being more open to all forms of innovation and seeing it as the calling card of the future. In addition to participants from industry and academia, the event was opened up to local secondary schools. According to Sarah Geraghty, Student Recruitment and Outreach Manager at NUI Galway, said: “It’s important for the University to share innovations, small and great, with the wider community. By involving secondary schools in ‘Innovation at Play’ we hope to inspire the next generation of innovative thinkers.” Workshops included: Parallel Hands-on, Minds-on Workshops. Creativity Through Mask Making - A workshop tool for reflection on the process of the person as inventor and innovator. Innovation Through Lego Serious Play - A hands-on workshop in Lego Serious Play to enhance innovation in communication, creativity and building shared mental models. Story Telling Through Sound - Exploring ways of telling a story using only sound instead of words. Innovation through Performance: a Practice-based workshop - How to use theatre skills to inspire and foster creativity in yourself and the people you work with. Fireside Chat – Innovation Knows No Boundaries – a panel and intergenerational conversation on innovation and the contributions that each generation can make by truly embracing innovation. Mary Dempsey from the College of Engineering and Informatics at NUI Galway, said: “NUI Galway’s education mission is to build communities of contemporary innovators who will imagine and realise the world as a better place for all society, and the Innovation Symposium we hope will encourage people to explore how the spirit of innovation can be nurtured through playful methodologies.” -Ends- 

NUI Galway in conjunction with the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) will host a public lecture by Fintan O’Toole entitled ‘Bernard Shaw and the Uses of Celebrity’ to mark the publication of Judging Shaw on Tuesday, 7 November at 6.30pm. The event will take place in the Aula Maxima at the University and will be followed by a panel discussion on “Making Judging Shaw” moderated by Professor Patrick Lonergan, NUI Galway with Ruth Hegarty, RIA, Barry Houlihan, James Hardiman Library and Fintan O’Toole. Judging Shaw is the fourth book in the Royal Irish Academy’s award-winning ‘Judging’ series and looks at the legacy of George Bernard Shaw (GBS), Nobel prize-winner for literature and internationally renowned playwright, intellectual and commentator. The book, written by Orwell-prize-winning journalist Fintan O’Toole, traces the growth of ‘GBS’, the first great global brand, and discovers how Shaw created this most modern of concepts. Judging Shaw brings together a new insights on the making and invention of GBS, the complex relationships Shaw had with both England and Ireland, through times of revolution and after; reconsiders the ‘dark side of GBS’ as well as his death, commemoration and legacies. The illustrated volume features over one hundred digitised archival documents, sourced from institutions around the world, including NUI Galway’s digital theatre collections at the Hardiman Library, many published for the first time and which visualise the great achievements and also wide range of networks Shaw lived and worked in. Also being unveiled is a new exhibition to coincide with the publication of Judging Shaw. Co-curated by Barry Houlihan of NUI Galway, Ruth Hegarty and Jeff Wilson of the Royal Irish Academy and Fintan O’Toole, the exhibition brings a wealth of archival images and stories from Shaw’s remarkable public and private life, drawing on many experiences such as time spent in the West of Ireland at Coole Park, the home of Lady Isabella Augusta Gregory, Shaw’s political and socialist writing, his theatre as staged in London, Dublin and also in Belfast after his death. The legacy of Shaw is considered in the ‘afterlife of GBS’, how his work was staged in contemporary times and how his life was commemorated. Before he died, Shaw noted those around him were ‘going Shaw-mad!’ The exhibition will be open to the public at the O’Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway. George Bernard Shaw has left a vast legacy of theatrical, fictional, polemical, critical and philosophical writing. The first person to win both a Nobel Prize and an Academy Award, Shaw bridges the Victorian era and the contemporary culture of celebrity. The GBS brand came to be recognised globally as referring to an Irish provocateur with a red beard and startling opinions. He was a master of self-invention, a nobody who captured the zeitgeist and one of the first private individuals to understand fully how to generate—and how to use—global fame. Speaking in advance of the public lecture, Professor Patrick Lonergan, said: “We are delighted to welcome Fintan O’Toole and the Royal Irish Academy to NUI Galway to explore and celebrate the life and work of George Bernard Shaw. This university is deeply committed to preserving our nation’s theatrical heritage through our work in archives, allowing us to offer courses that give our students a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on Irish theatre.  We also are strongly committed to promoting awareness of that heritage through talks, publications, and other activities. This beautifully produced book and the fascinating exhibition that accompanies it will bring huge pleasure to readers and theatre-makers around the world, ensuring that Shaw’s legacies – as a dramatist and a political thinker – will have an impact for generations to come.”   Fintan O’Toole said: “Shaw had an ambivalent relationship with Ireland, but Ireland had a very ambivalent relationship with Shaw. He is by far the most influential, famous Irish person who has ever lived. There is no other Irish person that had the global reach that Shaw had. He is a vast terrain. It is a pleasure to see the book translated into an entirely different medium in the exhibition and one of the things that you see in it is that as well as being a great thinker, a great political activist, great dramatist, as well as that he was one of the world’s great posers.” Admission is free but places are limited so please register go to www.conference.ie  ENDS

Galway’s innovators invited to join biggest global climate action hackathon in history to reduce carbon footprint of Galway city Galway city’s innovators will join 111 cities across 44 countries on six continents in a day of innovation to generate pioneering ideas that could lead Galway towards the zero-carbon economy of the future. Galway Climathon 2017 will harness the energy and dynamism of all interested groups and individuals to develop and scale innovations towards a zero-carbon future for Galway city, taking place on Friday 27 October at the Cube in NUI Galway’s Bailey Allen Hall. This is the second year that Galway has participated in the Global Climathon hackathon, which this year is being hosted by NUI Galway’s Ryan Institute in conjunction with the award-winning Masters degree in Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (MScCCAFS) program at the University. The global 24-hour climate change hackathon, powered by Climate-KIC will take place simultaneously in major cities around the world. Climate-KIC is the EU’s largest public-private innovation partnership focused on climate change, and runs this annual event to empower individuals and organisations to work together in order to develop new solutions to the climate crisis at the city scale. Professor Charles Spillane, Director of the Ryan Institute at NUI Galway, said: “Cities consume over two-thirds of the world’s energy and account for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. With 90% of the world’s urban areas situated on coastlines, cities are at high risk from some of the devastating impacts of climate change, such as rising sea levels and powerful coastal storms. Coastal cities such as Galway are on the frontlines of global climate change and are well-positioned to play a leadership role with sister cities worldwide in driving global action to address climate change. Our Climathon event presents a unique opportunity for multiple innovators, groups and individuals to work together to develop and scale innovations towards a zero-carbon footprint horizon-point for Galway city districts, sectors and inhabitants.” At Galway Climathon 2017, each team will develop their own innovation idea throughout the one-day event, facilitated by the NUI Galway TechInnovate team, culminating in a pitch competition at the end of the day before a high-profile judging panel. The top three teams will receive over €1000 in TechInnovate funding support to progress their innovations on to accelerator and entrepreneurship programs that will in turn translate them into start-up companies, social enterprises or funded projects/programmes. Dr Peter McKeown and Dr David Styles from NUI Galway’s MScCCAFS program added: “Galway can lead in this global challenge, having been in the firing line of a number of powerful storms over the past few years, such as Storm Desmond in 2015 and Storm Ophelia last week. It is therefore apt that Galway harnesses the creativity and international innovation leadership for which it is renowned to lead global efforts in climate mitigation.” Climathon 2017 will provide a unique opportunity for innovators, change agents and stakeholders in Galway to create new technologies or ways to implement existing technologies that can effectively decarbonise the city, and other cities globally. Prospective innovators are encouraged to sign up for Climathon 2017 at: https://climathon.climate-kic.org/galway and Follow on Twitter @GalwayClimathon View Climathon participating cities globally here: https://climathon.climate-kic.org/#map -Ends-