Éiru’s Welcome; A Panel for All

Éiru’s Welcome: A Panel for All

Éiru’s Welcome is a collaborative stained glass panel created with the National Gallery of Ireland’s Apollo Youth Panel. The work reimagines the spirit of An Túr Gloine through a contemporary lens- exploring themes of mythology, migration, and belonging.

Developed through workshops in both Dublin and Belfast, the project brought together traditional glass painting techniques and contemporary co-design. Drawing inspiration from Irish myth, the panel centres the figure of Éiru, a welcoming presence guiding new arrivals to the island. Her cloak forms the rolling landscape, a gesture of care and connection, while light streams through a symbolic glass tower behind her, which is based in Wilhelmina Geddes’s illustration of the Glass Tower.

Each Youth Panel member contributed their own patterns and motifs to the design, embedding personal narratives within the piece, from constellations and wildflowers to spirals and scallop shells. These details form a tapestry of lived experience, celebrating the diversity of Ireland’s young people and reframing the mythology of origin into one of inclusion and shared identity. Each of the participants made their own small panel to keep.

“Éiru’s Welcome: A Panel for All” is the first stained glass commission ever undertaken by the National Gallery of Ireland, and now forms part of the permanent collection in the Gallery’s Reading Rooms.

Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to the National Gallery of Ireland Youth Panel, NGI Education team, in particular Oisín Kenny and Kate Drinane, and NGI Library and Archives in particular Marie Lynch and Andrea Lydon.