For the first time since its 2011 move to King’s Cross, Central Saint Martins didn’t host its BA graduate show on campus. Instead, insiders, students, and the occasional aunt found themselves pulled out of the King’s Cross bubble and dropped into a car park in Peckham. Getting there required a guided ascent through stairs drenched in a shade of pink that a 2016 LA wall would probably rather forget. The climb seemed designed to “warm up” guests for London’s uncooperative breeze, which promptly ignored the invitation and made itself very present at the rooftop level instead. Frank’s Café, perched above the site like it’s been asked to comment on the weather, offered a brief moment of calm. That is, until the wind decided to come back significantly less polite. A few flights down, the car park finally reveals itself as a much quieter seating plan.
Until, of course, the lineup rolls out. This is still a space for experimentation, after all, not marketability. Some of the 40 designers got their hands on prints, some on childhood memories, and some on social commentary. Take it from Polina Kadilnikova, a Ukrainian womenswear student who won the first prize (voted by the public instead of a room full of industry eyes this time) with a collection shaped by displacement, where home is no longer a fixed point but a condition. Silhouettes hinted at armour, but never fully resolved into safety. The first model walked down the runway in a helmet and disguised kneecaps, and a tunic printed with a painted forest image, arms pinned in place, movement not an option.
Harley Angrabeit, who took home the H&M Sustainability Fashion Award (and kept our attention firmly glued), built a collection pulling from dancehall’s sweaty glamour, Ridley Road Market bargaining, and the proximity of church aunties watching over everything at once. A wooden hanger, scaled up to the size of a small car, carried both model and look down the runway. A jewelry stand was built into a garment just under the bust. Elsewhere, what looked like both Medusa’s head and an inflatable airplane pillow appeared at the hem of a skirt. Weirdly brilliant.
Yuki Naka, who also got his hands on that same award, managed to fashion garments from soap, bubbles and all. His collection began with a letter from his grandmother, remembered more for its smell than its words, pulling from domestic settings and sensory cues. In CSM, that translates into wearable dinner tables, outerwear in the size of fitting rooms, even bubbles. I imagine that same box full of letters holding childhood paintings too, and Finlay Maguire seems to lean into that logic. His collection pulls from those arguably ugly floral motifs on paper your mother used to receive after school. Colorful capes read almost like oversized rugs in motion, while wellies suggest the flowers were never ugly, just childish all along. Everyone got personal, including knitwear student Arora Nielson, whose Notes app mantra ended up on a jacquard mini dress. We hear you, Nielson. Steak, eggs, avocado, meditation, not mad at it.
When you look at a photograph of a moment, you aren’t just witnessing that fraction of a second when the camera captured the scene we see. We are witnessing a moment from a story and then building our own narrative around it. That’s what London-based analogue photographer Arlau is encouraging people to do through the images she has captured across Central Asia in her solo exhibition ‘Chromatic Terrains’ at the Handbag Factory in Vauxhall, London.
If the places she’s captured are places you’ve been, then we meld our memories with what’s in each photograph to create a story that’s part our own and part Arlau’s. It’s likely that most visitors to the exhibition haven’t been to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Georgia, and she’s painting a picture of these places: the people, the natural beauty, and her own nostalgia for the places she has visited.
The colour photographs range from stunning architecture to a cat lying atop a piece of street furniture, capturing the everyday life that greats like Martin Parr, Vivian Maier and Jeff Wall have done. However, the Central Asian setting of Arlau’s images would make them unfamiliar to a largely Western audience. The use of analogue photography does give them a dated feel, deliberately employed to trigger a sense of nostalgia that wouldn’t be as effective in a digital format.
The black-and-white photographs have the timeless quality we associate with the medium, and the grand, sweeping landscapes evoke the work of Sebastiao Salgado and Ansel Adams. Placing these empty landscapes alongside those of people on a train or in a car parked within the landscape provides a strong contrast and highlights how landscapes transform with human presence.
The final third belongs to risographs, which feature far less detail, so we only get snatches of the information we find in Arlau’s photographs. However, risographs are much more tactile than photography, so there’s more information to be found in the way they feel.
Each of the three sets of images – colour, black-and-white photography, and risographs – is given one wall each, in a beautiful curation by Darya Kalembet. It represents how memory functions: we remember a moment vividly, in colour, before it fades to monochrome and then to the faintest details, as we see in the risographs.
By placing the works in a scattered hang, rather than in straight lines, the hang captures how memory works: we get snatches of it when we see a familiar image, sound, or smell, rather than a linear projection that lets our brains fixate on a particular date.
The centre of the space features bowls from Bukhara, Uzbekistan, in recognition of the traditional crafts that are such an important part of Central Asian culture and heritage.
Arlau’s work reminds us of how much there is still to explore in the world, the images we are yet to capture, the memories we will form, and how those memories will consolidate or fade over time. As the great Ansel Adams once said, “You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
‘Chromatic Terrains’ by Arlau, curated by Darya Kalembet, was on at The Handbag Factory in London, from 4-9 June.
In an art world increasingly shaped by digital visibility, artists and curators are navigating a paradox: the more they are encouraged to share, the harder it becomes to sustain a meaningful and coherent presence. Beyond the pressures of constant output and algorithmic performance, a quieter shift that prioritises structure over speed is emerging, and legibility over reach.
Sisters Evelīna Gorbačova, Digital Development Lead and Veronika Gorbačova, Curatorial Lead, are part of a generation rethinking how creative practices exist online. Through their work with FOLLOW.ART, they explore how artists and curators can move beyond fragmented digital identities and instead build intentional, enduring representations of their work, using data not as a metric of performance, but as a tool for reflection, connection, and long-term development.
We spoke with them about the evolving role of digital presence, the shared challenges between artistic and curatorial practices, and what it means to be truly understood, not just seen, today.
There’s a growing fatigue around algorithm-driven visibility. From your perspective, what feels fundamentally broken about how artists and curators are currently expected to exist online?
E: Perhaps nothing is “broken”, but there is a mismatch. Many platforms seem normalized to frantic speed, search for and respond to quick bursts of information and short attention spans. Artistic work tends to demand more time and may not automate well into the quick-hits.
What ends up happening then is that the artists start trying to tailor what they’re doing to the platform. And after a while that gets tiring, because they’re not actually able to do what they do because they’re working within the parameters of how they’re supposed to share.
V: Exactly! Nowadays artists are supposed to be their own social media and marketing managers (some combine it with also being art managers and curators for themselves), and juggling multiple jobs never seems to be rejuvenating for anyone, so why should it be for them? And there’s a simple truth that, in my opinion, reveals that fundamentally broken aspect of online self-presentation: algorithms prefer what they know and fear the unknown. Artists and curators tend to do the opposite.
E: And there’s the risk of artistic and curatorial work becoming flattened; you begin to focus on how it’s going to appear online, how people are going to respond to it, rather than what it actually is; and in a way you’re attempting to fit into an environment that isn’t even real. That’s why one of the core principles of FOLLOW.ART is to stay algorithm free.
Both artists and curators rely on visibility, but in very different ways. Where do you see their challenges overlapping and where do they diverge?
E: For artists, communication often occurs through their work. It’s a sensory and intuitive way of sharing that requires time and attention from the viewer. What we see online is usually fragments of it.
V: And that’s still considering that most artists can actually show what they’ve been working on through social media. Whereas curators rarely can fit the final product of their research into the rectangular IG feed. Their work is reduced to a few installation shots and some bits and pieces of an interview, if they’re lucky, but most of it is left behind the curtains, because it’s hard to translate into visual formats.
That’s why one of the top priorities for curatorial profiles at FOLLOW.ART was to have as much space for text as possible, so that each project can be described in detail.
E: It’s always worth asking yourself what kind of visibility you are actually aiming for. Do you want to reach as many people as possible, or do you want to connect with the right people who might work with you and support your practice over time? We built FOLLOW.ART exactly for intentional connections. Each artist and curator has their own profile – the Cards, a multifunctional portfolio that answers to the needs of the creative practice and is designed to be used on-site during exhibitions, art fairs, studio visits and other IRL situations in the form of a QR code. By scanning it, the visitors can save your contacts, see your last projects, book a studio visit or a meeting directly and even support creative’s practice financially in seconds. All of that without the need for the audience to register at the platform.
V: To make a quick point about visibility: artists already spend a lot of time posting about exhibition openings and inviting hundreds or even thousands of followers to come and see the work. Imagine if, the next day after the exhibition, the artist could see that visitors had supported their practice financially or reached out to arrange a studio visit to see more works. That goes beyond likes and following on social media. That is the real mutual support system that we’re building, where visibility can lead to something more concrete. Where artists and curators are not only giving, while visitors simply take in the experience. It’s a two-way street.
You often speak about moving from visibility to legibility. How would you define “legibility” in the context of a creative practice, and why does it matter now?
E: In my view, legibility is about being understood by allowing someone to spend time with your work and connect with it. Right now, artistic and curatorial work is visible, but mostly through fragmented posts, just like Veronika mentioned: an image here, a caption there.
V: I would define legibility as the ability to understand what someone’s practice is really about, not just see that they are active.
This is especially important for curators, both in their communication with colleagues and potential partners, and with the wider audience. However, the professional art circle is relatively small, so people often connect through mutual contacts and each other’s projects. Whereas the gap between art professionals and the audience is much bigger, and I think that is worth putting at the centre of the conversation, especially now.
If people cannot understand the work, it is much harder to imagine them supporting it. And audience support is exactly what curators, and the art industry as a whole, need at a time when cultural funding is under pressure and many art professionals are working in even more fragile conditions.
E: For me, the best way to understand artists’ work is to visit their studio and see the conditions where work comes to life, and hear artists talk about what they’re exploring. This is the experience that stays with you and has the power to transform your thinking. Studio visits shouldn’t be limited to professionals. Friends, acquaintances, and local communities can also provide valuable interactions, especially when so much of an artist’s work happens in isolation.
This is where support comes into play. When someone feels connected, they often want to give back. It’s a very natural exchange. Through FOLLOW.ART, artists and curators can receive tangible support in a form of micro-patronage from the audience, who are not necessarily collectors. We’ve seen this in practice across exhibitions and fairs where even small contributions, from £20 to £200, made a difference, not only financially but also in how audiences engage. It turns a passive viewer into an active participant.
V: In more practical terms, it works like this: Each of our members has their own QR code, which they place in the exhibition space or their studio. When scanned, it not only gives a direct way to support their practice financially but also gives visitors a clear overview of their practice, invites them to save contact information, arrange a meeting or studio visit. It’s about saying to the audience: “I’m open to you. Let’s have a conversation.” rather than keeping a distance.
On a monthly basis, we also host curatorial roundtable discussions with multiple members who are using micro-patronage in their exhibitions. These conversations have been really valuable because curators share what actually works in practice, often down to the smallest details, like where to place QR codes in an exhibition space so they don’t interfere with the artworks but are still visible enough for visitors. And those details matter, especially because talking about money is still uncomfortable in the art industry. So we try to keep this as an open conversation with our members, learning from them what feels natural and what could work better.
Within the team, we really believe that more people should feel invited into art, not only as visitors, but as audiences who understand what they are experiencing and have a direct way to support the practices they value.
Photographer’s Credit: Anastasiia Havrylenko
The idea of using data within a creative practice can feel counterintuitive, even uncomfortable. How do you reframe data as something reflective rather than reductive?
E: It depends on the type of data. If we focus only on likes, views, and followers, it does feel limiting. But that’s just one type of data, mostly related to marketing.
V: One artist told us she keeps an Excel sheet for every material cost behind each work. Very unromantic, yet it proved to be very useful. For her data wasn’t about ‘making more money’, it was about sustaining her practice in the long run. Data helps you protect your future self before burnout becomes the business model.
E: Yes, that kind of data gives you a sense of control and helps you make informed decisions and sustain your practice over time.
V: Data can also be valuable when it helps artists and curators understand how people engage with their work in real situations. That is why we included statistics inside our members’ profiles, showing things like how many times their QR code was scanned. During an exhibition or event, this gives a useful sense of audience response. Did visitors notice the QR code? Did they want to learn more? Was it placed in the right spot? These are small details, but they can make a real difference in how people are invited to connect with the work.
Curatorial work has always involved structuring relationships, between artworks, ideas, and audiences. Do you see a parallel between curating exhibitions and structuring one’s own digital identity?
V: It’s an interesting thought, but before answering, I ought to rescue the word ‘curating’ from mild overuse. Today, everything is curated, from an Instagram feed and a playlist to a breakfast plate if the lighting is right. In that context, ‘curating’ often just means selecting. And we all know that curating an exhibition is much more than choosing works and placing them on walls.
But if by digital identity we imply professional online self-presentation, then its effectiveness indeed rests on three main pillars, namely your work, your idea (or message) and your audience. And the causes of imbalance are noticeable everywhere.
If you cut the audience out of the equation, your online presentation becomes a one-way street. We see this quite often with artist websites that are visually beautiful, almost artworks in themselves, but absolutely impossible to navigate. They have a clear artistic value, but if a potential buyer, curator, or sponsor gets lost in what was supposed to be your professional introduction, then the presentation is not really doing its job.
Now, if you cut your messaging short, the presentation also loses depth. This happens quite often with artists who share the practical details of their work, such as size, medium and price, which, don’t get me wrong, are absolutely important and should not be hidden somewhere in a mysterious corner of the internet. But without your personal intent, the work can easily appear too flat online, yet again leaving your audience disconnected from you.
And if you cut the work itself short, this becomes especially visible with curators. For a long time, curators had very limited online infrastructure to present what they actually do. Instagram became the default place, but it is not exactly generous to text-based or research-led practices. So complex curatorial work often gets reduced to a carousel of opening night images. It may look cool, but it again reduces the labour behind the project. This is also one of the ideas at the root of FOLLOW.ART, and it has shaped my role from the beginning, which is to provide high-quality infrastructure that curators have long been missing.
For artists, there is often pressure to continuously produce and share. How can they move toward a more sustainable, intentional form of presence?
E: I believe this shift is already underway. In the broader creator space, there is less emphasis on reaching the largest audience possible. Instead, the focus is on building a smaller group of people who genuinely care about the work.
For artists, that may mean focusing less on constant production and more on clarity. Make sure that when someone encounters your work, they can understand it, return to it and maintain a connection.
Artists and curators excel at creating communities around their work. That’s what people are seeking right now, especially in larger cities. An exhibition, a studio visit, or a small event does create shared experiences that are very important for a healthy society. The challenge is how to maintain that relationship. That’s why we made the Card in a way that when you meet someone, you can easily share your work, and people can revisit it later, stay connected or support it.
How can mapping elements like themes, collaborations, or research interests actually influence the direction of someone’s practice over time? Have you seen this shift happen?
V: This is almost fundamental for curatorial practice. Curators work through research, so mapping themes, references, and collaborations is part of how projects are created. When you start seeing those patterns more clearly, it becomes easier to develop future exhibitions and to position your work within a broader context.
At the same time, you often need to find artists or other curators who are already working with similar ideas. That’s where having access to a structured network becomes very important. Through the Connectory, this process becomes more intentional and you can actively search and reach out to people whose work aligns with your research.
E: Also, many artists reach a point where they want to explore a new medium or research direction, but might want to have more direction in navigating it. Having access to a community where you can find people who have already worked with similar materials or topics makes a significant difference. Instead of figuring everything out alone, you become part of a network where knowledge is shared more openly.
Many creatives today feel caught between intuition and optimisation. How do you balance the need for structure with the unpredictability that’s essential to artistic work?
E: I really like what the Berlin-based curator Jenia Yanes said: “Creativity is an error in a controlled environment.”
In a world that is becoming more structured and automated, creativity is one of the few areas where unpredictability still thrives.
So, structure should not replace intuition; it should support it. Structure helps you move things forward, but too much can stifle the process. There needs to be some space and flexibility. That’s also how we view the infrastructure we create. It should enhance the workflow, not dictate it. Each artist and curator should have the freedom to use them as they choose, as the infrastructure is quite multifunctional, depending on the needs of each creative.
If we think about digital presence as a kind of “living archive,” what should artists be preserving and what can they afford to let go of?
E: It comes down to what you want to preserve. What represents your work over time? There’s often pressure to document everything, especially with social media, but I see more people getting off that.
But digital presence functions as an archive whether we intend it or not. And it requires maintenance because formats change, platforms close down, links break. It’s worth keeping your materials across multiple places, backing things up on drives, and even keeping physical copies when possible. It might sound basic, but it becomes important over time.
The Card can help with this in a very practical way. It is not an archive, but it can point to the places where different parts of your practice live like your website, cloud folders, articles, catalogues or other links. And even if some links break over time, the Card still holds the essential information about your practice in one place.
V: For curators, there is too little preserved rather than too much. Exhibitions are temporary by nature, and once they are over, what remains is usually limited documentation. So preserving the thinking behind the project becomes very important. There are surprisingly few spaces where curators can share their research that are not academic research papers. There is a need to know what your peers are working on, what kind of questions they encounter, and to have documentation of the thinking process rather than only the finished work. Currently, we’re giving our Substack platform to our curatorial members to share their unfinished research or reflections on their past projects, to prolong the lifecycle of a project and encourage a more casual and accessible dialogue around the process of curatorial work.
Looking ahead, what does a healthier digital ecosystem for artists actually look like? What needs to change?
E: A healthier space would be one where artists are not constantly pressured to reshape their work for platforms. Digital tools should help them showcase what they already do instead of demanding changes. I think we’re already witnessing a shift. People are more interested in depth, process, and understanding where work originates.
V: Right now, visual and fast-moving content dominates. Research-based and process-driven work often remains invisible. So change needs to be not only technological, but also cultural. A recognition that not everything valuable can be reduced to immediate visibility. And that slower, more complex practices also need space and infrastructure to exist.
If you are an artist or curator, you can join the FOLLOW.ART movement and create your FOLLOW.ART Card
No Joy has announced a new EP, Big Life, Big Leaf, a companion EP to last year’s Bugland. Jasamine White-Gluz worked on it with the album’s producer Angel Marcloid, aka Fire-Toolz, and it lands August 21 via Hand Drawn Dracula. The effervescent title track was co-written with longtime collaborator Jorge Elbrecht. Check it out below.
“This was a demo I had that we never got around to during the Bugland sessions,” White-Gluz explained in a statement. “In 2024 I brought it to Jorge Elbrecht (Japanese Breakfast, Sky Ferreira), who I have a long history of writing with. We really love exploring the absurd, combining musical ideas that shouldn’t really make sense together – it felt great picking up where we left off after 2020’s Motherhood LP. Bringing the song back around to Angel Marcloid (Fire-Toolz) more recently (post-Bugland LP sessions) made perfect sense to me; both Angel and Jorge have insane musicality and melodic imagination. Angel is a brilliant pop producer, she has a knack for shaping where a song can take you emotionally. Tara McLeod (Kittie) rips on guitar as usual, continuing to bring this heavy-but-effervescent energy.
“Lyrically, I wrote and recorded these vocals in one take during an emotional time this past spring,” White-Gluz added. “I was exploring the boundless pain one feels when it is time to say goodbye to someone or something. It is also during those moments that it is important to remember, ironically, to have joy. To mourn is also to celebrate.”
Big Life, Big Leaf EP Cover Artwork:
Big Life, Big Leaf EP Tracklist:
1. Barking at the Sun
2. Big Life, Big Leaf
3. Süki & Amadeus
“I want to love and be loved, but I also want to be free,” Julia Jacklin said in a press release. “The tension between those two things has been the central question of my life. The Gem felt like a metaphor for the whole process, because a lot of it did feel like digging. I felt like I was doing it almost in the dark, just trusting I was going to find something.”
The new album is named after a small bar in Melbourne, Australia, where Jacklin moved from Sydney in 2017. She worked on it with Rat Shack studios owner Robert Muinos, guitarist Jacob Diamond, bassist Mimi Gilbert, and drummer Jess Elwood, recording in a makeshift studio in one of the hotel rooms above the pub.
The Gem Cover Artwork:
The Gem Tracklist:
1. Brand New
2. God Sometimes
3. If I Had the Hand of God
4. The Hardest Thing
5. Angel Vision
6. Real Life
7. Get Away From Me (I Think I’ll Love You Soon)
8. You Turned on the Tap
9. Walk on Me
10. I Wish [feat. The Maes]
Alice and Steve isn’t your average rom-com. In fact, the premise is enough to turn away viewers looking to swoon while rooting for the central couple. That’s part of the show’s appeal.
The dark comedy-drama explores what happens when your best friend starts dating your daughter. The situation is awkward and cringe, but also impossible to look away from. However, is it meaty enough to sustain a follow-up? Here’s what we know so far.
Alice and Steve Season 2 Release Date
At the time of writing, there’s no official news available about a potential Alice and Steve season 2. The show recently premiered on Disney+ in the UK, with all six episodes available at once. In other words, it’s early days. A renewal could be announced somewhere down the line.
The finale ends with a cliffhanger. While that cliffhanger could act as an ambiguous ending, the show’s creator, Sophie Goodhart, is open to the idea of making a second installment.
“I don’t love when shows keep you hanging too much about what the feelings are, so I wanted to do a complete season, but knew I could do a season 2 – but I’m not sure that there’d be more than that,” Goodhart said.
Ultimately, it depends on how many people tune in. If all goes well, new episodes could arrive in 2027 or 2028.
Alice and Steve Cast
Nicola Walker as Alice
Jemaine Clement as Steve
Yali Topol Margalith as Izzy
Joel Fry as Daniel
Tyrese Eaton-Dyce as Dom
Marcia Warren as Val
Eilidh Fisher as Rome
What Is Alice and Steve About?
Alice and Steve centres on Alice, a woman in her 50s whose life is thrown into chaos when her best friend, Steve, begins to date her 26-year-old daughter, Izzy.
That said, the show is less interested in the romance itself and more interested in the fallout. As you might imagine, Alice sees Steve’s relationship with Izzy as a profound betrayal. Not only is Steve her friend, but he has known Izzy since she was a child. As Alice tries to break the couple apart, her actions become increasingly desperate.
By the end of the first season, things escalate to an unhinged level of absurdity, with everyone unsure of where they stand. Without giving away major spoilers, the two friends manage to talk it through, but their future is uncertain.
Alice and Steve season 2 would likely pick up from there and explore whether the friendship might be salvaged. For now, all we can do is wait and see.
Are There Other Shows Like Alice and Steve?
If you like Alice and Steve, shows with similar vibes include Catastrophe, Platonic, Breeders, and Fleabag.
When it comes to enduring series, Criminal Minds certainly fits the bill.
The drama originally ran for 15 seasons, from 2005 to 2020. Instead of fading into obscurity, however, it was quickly revived in 2022. Subtitled Evolution, it continues to draw in viewers. Even better, it shows no signs of slowing down.
Season 19, which premiered in May, is enjoying quite the hype at the moment, in part because of a notable guest star. Connor Storrie from the hit show Heated Rivalry has a recurring role as a narcissist who can be quite charming when required.
While his appearance will likely bring in new fans, is that enough to guarantee that Criminal Minds: Evolution will continue? Here’s what we know so far.
Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 20 Release Date
Luckily, fans of the long-running drama have no reason to worry. Criminal Minds: Evolution season 20 is definitely happening. The show has been renewed ahead of the season 19 premiere.
Moreover, filming is already underway, so we can expect the show to stick to a traditional release schedule. That means the new season will likely arrive in May or June 2027.
Criminal Minds: Evolution Cast
Joe Mantegna as David Rossi
Cook as Jennifer “JJ” Jareau
Kirsten Vangsness as Penelope Garcia
Aisha Tyler as Dr. Tara Lewis
RJ Hatanaka as Tyler Green
Zach Gilford as Elias Voit
Adam Rodriguez as Luke Alvez
Paget Brewster as Emily Prentiss
What Could Happen in Criminal Minds: Evolution Season 20?
Criminal Minds: Evolution revolves around the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU). It features a team of skilled profiles who investigate serial killers and other violent offenders.
Unlike the original show’s mostly self-contained cases, the sequel features season-long story arcs. In other words, episodes connect multiple investigations and delve deeper into the personal lives of the team members.
Central to the revival has been the ongoing threat posed by Elias Voit, also known as Sicarius. Besides being guilty of his own share of crimes, Voit establishes a network of serial killers. He is currently in custody, but the network lives on, and the BAU is dealing with the fallout. As for Connor Storrie, he appears in four season 19 episodes as a man with a connection to Voit.
Criminal Minds: Evolution season 20 will likely continue in the same vein, combining standalone cases with twists related to Voit’s dark legacy. For now, you can catch season 19 weekly until late July. In the UK, new episodes are available on Disney+.
Are There Other Shows Like Criminal Minds: Evolution?
If you enjoy Criminal Minds: Evolution, you might also like Mindhunter, Bones, Castle, Hannibal, Law & Order: SVU, or Dexter.
Ireland has a way of throwing people off. Visitors show up with cliffs and castles in their heads – and fair enough, those things are real – but that version of the country sits on top of a quieter one that most outsiders never quite reach. The version where a GAA pitch on a Sunday morning has that particular smell of cut grass and anticipation. Where a trad session starts in the corner of a pub with no announcement and no fanfare, just someone taking out an instrument. Where news travels fast because everyone already knows everyone. That Ireland hasn’t gone anywhere in 2026. If anything, people are holding onto it a bit more deliberately than before.
The GAA: Not Just a Sport, Practically a Religion
Ask almost any Irish person about their GAA club and you’ll notice a particular shift in their voice. It’s not the way someone talks about a hobby. It’s closer to how they’d talk about a neighbourhood, or a family. That’s because for many people in Ireland, the two things genuinely overlap.
The Gaelic Athletic Association runs hurling, Gaelic football, camogie, and handball at every level – from primary school pitches to Croke Park in Dublin – and it does so on entirely amateur principles. Nobody gets paid. At the highest levels of county championship, players still hold day jobs; they train in the evenings, travel to away fixtures on weekends, and represent their communities with the same intensity you’d expect from professional athletes. For those who want to follow the county championship more closely – or simply enjoy the match day atmosphere with added skin in the game – using a 1xbet promo code when registering can give new users a head start without any extra spend. It’s a small thing, but on the Saturday before a county final, it can make watching feel even more electric.
County colours run deeper than most outsiders expect. Kerry in gold and green. Kilkenny in black and amber. Tipperary in blue and gold. These combinations don’t just appear on jerseys – they’re on car flags, painted walls, and shop window displays throughout the summer months. When a county is doing well in the All-Ireland Championship, that energy is hard to ignore. It spills out of every conversation in the local shop and dominates every radio programme for miles around.
Hurling: The Game That Defies Easy Description
Of all the Gaelic games, hurling tends to produce the strongest reactions in people seeing it for the first time. It is one of the oldest field sports in Europe, with origins tracing back centuries in Irish history and mythology. Players use a wooden stick called a hurley to strike a small leather ball, the sliotar, which can travel at speeds of over 150 kilometres per hour. The ball goes airborne, players leap, and the whole thing happens on a pitch that’s significantly larger than a standard football field. It’s chaotic and beautiful in equal measure.
What makes hurling particularly special in 2026 isn’t the spectacle, though – it’s the intimacy. Local club games draw crowds that would seem disproportionate for the size of the venue. A parish final in a rural county might bring out three thousand people to a ground that holds fifteen hundred. They stand along the sideline. They argue with the referee. They sing. The experience is completely unlike anything a stadium offers, and it stays with you.
Trad Sessions: Where the Real Craic Lives
If the GAA represents the sporting soul of Ireland, then the traditional music session might be its emotional one. Not the tourist-facing kind – the ones with laminated menus and bodhráns played on cue – but the real sessions, the ones that happen because musicians want to play together and a pub happens to have a corner for them.
These gatherings operate without rehearsal or setlist. A fiddle player starts a reel; others pick it up; a tin whistle joins mid-phrase; and within a minute, something is happening that nobody planned. This is how Irish traditional music has been transmitted for centuries – not through notation or formal teaching, but through presence. By sitting close enough to hear the fingering. By playing the same tune badly until you play it well.
In 2026, the session scene across Ireland is as active as it’s been in decades. County Clare is often cited as the “Home of Trad,” and the villages of Ennistymon, Doolin, and Feakle remain the epicentre of the music that Ireland is famous for. But it’s not just the west. In Dublin, venues like Devitts on Camden Street host live traditional music seven nights a week – a commitment that says something meaningful about the demand. These sessions remain a vital part of Irish cultural life – informal, welcoming, and intergenerational – where musicians of all ages gather to share tunes late into the evening.
What First-Timers Get Wrong
Walking into a trad session without knowing the unwritten rules can lead to a few awkward moments. Here’s what actually matters:
Don’t clap between tunes. In a proper session, sets of three or four tunes run together without pause. Wait for the end of a set.
Don’t make requests. Sessions are instrumental and self-directed. The musicians play what they want to play.
Give the musicians space. The corner or table where they’re sitting is theirs. Don’t lean in with a phone.
Do order a drink. The pub is hosting this for a reason.
Arriving early is always the better option. The good spots disappear fast once word gets out.
None of this is unfriendly – quite the opposite. It’s a code that exists because the music itself is being respected. And once you understand that, the whole experience opens up.
The Smaller Traditions That Actually Hold Things Together
There’s a tendency when writing about Irish culture to reach for the big symbols – the cliffs, the castles, the craic. But the daily traditions that actually sustain community life in Ireland are considerably quieter. They’re the coffee morning held in the GAA clubhouse every Saturday. The agricultural show where someone’s grandmother enters her soda bread and genuinely hopes to beat her neighbour. The Tidy Towns competition, where volunteers spend months painting kerbs and planting flower beds because they care what their village looks like to other people.
The following table gives a sense of how some of these regular community fixtures are distributed throughout the year in rural and semi-rural Ireland:
Time of Year
Community Event
What It Involves
Spring (Feb–Apr)
Comhaltas music classes resume
Children and adults return to weekly group sessions
Late Spring (May)
Tidy Towns judging season begins
Villages clean up, plant, and paint for national competition
Summer (Jun–Aug)
All-Ireland Championship
GAA fixtures dominate weekends; county finals draw huge crowds
August
Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann
National traditional music festival, different host city each year
Autumn (Sep–Oct)
Agricultural shows and ploughing championships
Rural communities gather around farming heritage
Winter (Nov–Jan)
Indoor music sessions, parish fundraisers
Community life retreats indoors but stays active
These events don’t exist separately from each other. They’re nodes in the same network – the same volunteers who run the Tidy Towns committee also organise the Christmas fundraiser. The young lad playing hurling on Saturday is the same one learning fiddle on Tuesday. That overlap is not accidental; it’s the structure of how small communities sustain themselves.
Rural Ireland in 2026: Holding On and Moving Forward
There’s been no shortage of concern over the years about whether rural Ireland can hold its own against urbanisation and emigration. Towns that once had five pubs now have one. Post offices have closed. Schools have merged. And yet the picture in 2026 is more complex than simple decline. Some communities are genuinely thriving, precisely because people decided to stay and make things work rather than leave and wait for someone else to sort it out.
The rise of remote working since 2020 has had a measurable effect. People who might previously have relocated to Dublin for work are now living in Roscommon or Leitrim and contributing to local life in ways that were uncommon ten years ago. They’re joining GAA clubs. They’re becoming regulars at trad sessions. They’re entering kids in the local summer camp and arguing about planning decisions at county council meetings. It sounds mundane, but it adds up.
Several factors are shaping rural Irish community life in particular directions right now:
Remote working: Changed where people live, which changed which communities have population.
GAA investment: The association has significantly expanded youth development, bringing more children into club structures at earlier ages.
Irish language revival: Gaeltacht areas and Irish-medium schools are seeing renewed interest, particularly among younger parents.
Festival tourism: Events like the Fleadh and local food festivals draw visitors who spend money locally rather than funnelling through large hotel chains.
Community broadband: Better connectivity in rural areas has made it easier to both work from and stay connected within smaller towns and villages.
None of this means every challenge has been resolved. Housing in particular remains a serious pressure point in many counties. But the narrative of inevitable rural decline deserves more scrutiny than it usually gets.
The Pub: Still the Centre of Everything
It would be impossible to write about Irish community life without addressing the pub – and not because of alcohol, exactly, but because of function. The Irish pub, at its best, is a community notice board, a debate chamber, a concert venue, and a place to sit alone with a book without anyone asking you to leave. It’s one of the few spaces in Irish life that manages to be simultaneously social and solitary.
In 2026, that function is being renegotiated in interesting ways. Non-alcoholic options have improved dramatically – craft sodas, zero-percent beers, proper coffee. Some pubs host book clubs on quiet Tuesday nights. Others have become informal co-working spaces in the early afternoon. And the trad session, as discussed above, pulls in a crowd that spans generations and backgrounds in a way that very few other Irish institutions still manage.
For anyone planning to spend time in Ireland and actually engage with daily life rather than just pass through it – attend a GAA match, find a real session, enter the pub quiz. None of it requires money or insider knowledge. Just showing up is usually enough. And if the county happens to be playing that weekend, using a 1xbet promo code beforehand won’t hurt the experience one bit.
Why It Still Matters
There’s something worth noting about what Ireland has managed to preserve. Not every country that went through rapid modernisation in the late twentieth century came out the other side with this many functioning community structures still intact. The GAA, the session, the parish event calendar – these things could easily have faded into nostalgia. In many places, traditions like these have. Ireland is not immune to that pressure, but it has pushed back harder than most.
That resistance isn’t purely cultural sentiment. It’s practical. Communities that have strong local institutions – sports clubs, music groups, volunteer networks – tend to cope better with economic shocks, isolation, and demographic change. Ireland’s traditions serve a social function that goes well beyond identity. In 2026, that function looks more valuable than ever.
Ever heard of villeggiatura? Italian for a picturesque vacation so long and leisurely it starts requiring generational wealth and a pause button on real life. Born among Renaissance Venetian aristocrats escaping the city heat, it later became a tradition centred on slowing down, staying put and surrendering to local rhythms. In other words, the Zegna man doesn’t go on holiday. He relocates. This season, preferably to California. New York may be the brand’s largest market, but after a month overloaded with Cruise shows and luxury fashion summer migrations, Zegna looked towards its second-largest one instead. “We let Hermès take the hills,” Gildo Zegna told Vogue. Malibu got the Italians.
To be exact, Malibu Pier got them. Out past the pier, surfers were already circling the waves with the patience of people who had nowhere else to be, and the kind of ease that makes for a perfect background. While pelicans hovered lazily, as if also considering the cocktail selection, nearly 500 guests arrived to their Aperol Spritz-colored seats under matching parasols. Among them were Rami Malek, Roman Coppola, Andy Garcia, Easy Otabor, Scottie Pippen, and a handful of key clients, who later moved to Chateau Marmont for a buy-now, order-now version of Alessandro Sartori’s runway. The pier’s wooden boards, tired as they were, started to look oddly alive under the scene.
The clothes, on the other hand, carried an easy-going elegance, as the brand likes to describe. “The silhouettes always fluid, with lines that gently touch the body,” said the collection’s notes. Lines, however, weren’t always that gentle with fabrics. Stripes were everywhere, discreet, obnoxious, consistent. Elsewhere, think knit shirts, slouchy cardigans, silk suits, safari jackets, detachable collars, and bermuda shorts, a go-to in menswear this season (though slightly longer than Zegna’s version). Sartori leaned on Tessitura Ubertino’s restored 1950s-60s jacquard looms, where silk, paper and cotton blends produced the collection’s textured stripes, while a new woven-leather process saw suede and napa cut into strips, spun into yarn and reworked into fabric over more than a year. You can take the man out of the city, but not the city out of the man.
Hermès just took a flight Westside and landed somewhere between the hills of Bel Air, carrying on the second chapter of its Fall/Winter 2026 collection. Craftsmanship and movement were again positioned as the guiding references, this time filtered through Nadège Vanhée’s focus on dance and performance. As the brand put it in its show caption: “Craft and choreography converge through gestures perfected over time, revealing a form of beauty. A common language emerges, uniting dancer, artisan, and woman,” I’d probably pay Los Angeles a visit too, if I wanted French control to learn how to behave in motion.
Where can someone witness an alarming amount of the hardest to find and highest-priced Birkins and Kellys in Bel Air? Everywhere, technically. But a beige sculptural installation, washed in Californian golden hour light, drifting closer to Hermès orange, built around columns, pathways, and a sign reading “Silhouettes On The Horizon,” might just be the place to be. “It has the hint of old Europe mixed with the new world, it’s a place where you reinvent yourself, where you can explore everything,” Vanhée told Vogue. That exploring began with guests including Miley Cyrus, Keke Palmer, Julia-Louis Dreyfus, and Kerry Washington, hopping on a golf cart, moving through a sharp incline, and entering a butter-yellow drenched space.
Which, in hindsight, makes sense: the show opened with a trio in the same shade, described as “jaune fauve” in the press release and, later on, as “morning” in most people’s minds. “Rouge tango” moved closer to sunset, like a red scratch along the horizon on a summer day, while “vert impérial” signaled the end of that day, pushed further by its darker tones. Those colors appeared across satin dresses with ballet-influenced construction details, velvet ones leaning into 1930s and old-world references, sparkling knit showgirl onesies, and studded biker jackets in heavily worked leather. New bags came in east-west proportions, with totes in triangular silhouettes and relaxed shoulder shapes. And don’t forget, the Hermès girl, after all, is still a horse girl. Equestrian codes simply extend into everyday dressing, even a summer night out.
