Karena Ryan: Stitching the Legacy of the Tuam Sugar Factory

Karena Ryan is a multi-award-winning textile artist based in Tuam, County Galway. Her practice combines hand-felting, embroidery and repurposed vintage materials to preserve overlooked narratives and explore how memory and place can be held in stitch. With residencies across Ireland and Europe and work shown from The Hague to Philadelphia, Ryan’s art is rooted in community and the Irish landscape.

Her Cultural Growth Project, supported by the Creative Places Tuam Cultural Growth Fund, turns to an industrial story central to Tuam’s identity: the Tuam Sugar Factory. Once a major employer and social hub, the factory shaped the lives of generations until its closure in the 1980s. “The history of the sugar factory needs to be retold,” Ryan explains. “I want to preserve their stories and their legacy – where do these stories go if we do not gather them now?”

Since receiving the award, Ryan has spoken about the project in the Irish Independent with journalist Erika Sassone and in a live radio interview with John Morley on Galway Bay FM, sparking a wave of community interest. She is currently in the process of arranging and conducting interviews with former workers and with families who remember relatives who worked there, and will meet with the Old Tuam Society to help guide and enrich the research. She has also explored archival material in Tuam Library to begin mapping the factory’s history. Importantly, curator Sheelah Moloney of 2020Curates is assisting Ryan in gathering and shaping the information, bringing curatorial expertise to the process. Each conversation and discovery uncovers memories of labour, camaraderie and the rhythms of the beet campaigns – echoes of a time when the factory’s whistle set the pace of the town.

This research and development phase is deliberately focused on listening and collecting. Ryan is also travelling to other former sugar factory sites in Carlow, Mallow and Thurles to connect Tuam’s story with the wider history of Ireland’s sugar industry. Archival research in libraries and museums complements the oral histories, ensuring that voices and documents at risk of being lost are preserved.

The outcomes so far include a growing oral-history archive, new community connections, and a rich store of photographs and memorabilia. These materials will inform a future body of handmade textile work, stitched narratives, that will weave together memory, labour and place.

Alongside this project, Ryan’s wider practice continues to gain national recognition. She recently won a Future Makers Award from the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland, funding that will support her upcoming solo exhibition at the Leitrim Design House in Carrick-on-Shannon this November. This exhibition will feature hand-embroidered and stitched images of her ancestors on vintage Foxford blankets, drawing inspiration from her maternal and paternal families from Sligo and Mayo. It reflects a time when people worked the land and communities worked together, carrying a deep sense of nostalgia for shared traditions and collective memory.

She is also shortlisted in the Home category of the Irish Made Awards 2025 with Irish Country Magazine. The awards take place on 2 October at the Johnstown Estate. Having been shortlisted last year, Ryan went on to win Best Dressed, wearing a dress she designed and made herself, featuring a hand-embroidered image of her daughter.

“Working on the Tuam Sugar Factory project has shown me how deeply a single industry can shape a town’s character and sense of community,” says Ryan. “Every interview brings another layer of pride and memory. Gathering these stories now feels urgent and it is a privilege to hold and honour them through my future textile work.”

Looking ahead, Ryan plans to translate these collected voices into a textile installation, creating an enduring artistic record of Tuam’s industrial past and ensuring that the legacy of the sugar factory continues to be told for generations to come.

Contact Karena at tuamsugarfactory@gmail.com

www.karenaryanartist.com