Lisa Fingleton is an artist, filmmaker, writer and grower who has spent over twenty years cultivating deep-rooted connections between art, food and farming. Her projects incorporate socially engaged, collaborative and performative process; participatory moving image; large scale drawing installations; as well as creative and autobiographical writing.

Grounded on a nineteen acre organic farm and native woodland on the west coast of Ireland, she and her partner run a project called The Barna Way. From here they engage with the diverse community groups through social farming and live food and cultural events, while protecting habitats for wildlife. This seventeen year project is propelled by an accelerated sense of urgency around food insecurity, climate crisis, biodiversity loss and forced migration.

Lisa was the embedded artist with Corca Dhuibhne Inbhuanaithe / A Creative Imagining, one of 15 pilot projects funded by the Creative Climate Action Fund. She worked in partnership with the Dingle Hub, Green Arts Initiative of Ireland and Marei Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research and Innovation. Together they supported farmers on the Dingle Penninsula to creatively look at ways in which they can respond to climate change.

In 2022 Lisa worked with Creative Ireland and the OPW at the National Ploughing Championship to produce a 100 foot Interactive drawing project called The Future Is In The Fields. This drawing responded live to the solutions for climate change offered by farmers. The drawing was installed IMMA for the Earth Rising Festival.

Lisa is committed to creating cultural spaces where communities, artists, food producers and farmers can come together to resist industrial food systems and the fallacy of ‘cheap food’ by thinking global and acting local. Through the prism of eating and growing local food, communities are invited to create a vision for transformative food systems. Projects include an annual 30 Day Local Food Challenge, The Portlaoise Pizza and a recent installation of The Sandwich Project at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork.

The artist recently published two new books The Last Hug For A While and The Local Food Project. The Last Hug For While charts the artist’s responses to COVID and the climate crisis through a series of drawings and rhyming couplets. The Local Food Project explores the power of growing and eating local food in the context of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Lisa has MA in documentary film (Goldsmiths College, London) and a degree in Fine Art (NCAD). She has been the Kerry Council Visual Artist in Residence and Filmmaker in Residence.