Rachel Coffey from the National Youth Council of Ireland invited me to bring a stall to the Networking and capacity event for youth workers with Travellers, where young people from minorities could make badges that would express their sense of identity.
I love the images the young people chose:
I work regularly with young people from the Traveller community at the Mayfield Youth Cafe, with the wonderful Brenda Stillwell and Rachel Coffey (supported by the LCYP)
This year I have been invited to work wth young poeple and elders on a creative communities project to make a spooky artwork for the Mallow Castle Halloween Parade. We plumbed on chimes for the trees that would bring in the energy of the wind as well as passers by incorprating spooks, witches and skulls and other haunted beings. Here are some photos from the installation with members from the men’s shed, Mallow who have been contributing to the haunted walk every year for some time and are amassing quite a collection of pieces. Young people from schools and youth groups across the town took part and elders worked side by side, sharing spooky stories with young people at the Blue Cube.
So we had The Grand Finale on Saturday 28th September….
We were blessed with that gentle late September sunshine – Picnicking with Ordinary gifts we were a small gathering on the ground and ghost of the Engineer’s House. Elinor had laid out a cloth with cake and we had a table with flowers and I threw down a green blanket with this year’s apples on it. Gerard O’Brien stretched out on his old lawn, Siobhán sitting beside him as he reminisced about the old place and embraced the way that nature has had its way, covering over old activities and healing old wounds, some of the old trees remained, the tall cypresses and the laurels, there are gaps where memories dwell and new growth is everywhere. Richard the Mayfield librarian arrives wheeling his bike as Lisa walks alongside – Lisa is a new face for me, and yet she is an old Glen soul, growing up in the flats and attending to the community her whole life, she fills me up with her love for the place and her stories of shifting grounds, colours, textures and activities, I wish I’d met her years ago, we are now friends. Brenda and Éilis are chatting with Elinor, they are two Glen stalwarts who share a love for the wildlife here, both bird lovers and gardeners. Two young women with small children arrive and circle as the children play restlessly engrossed with stones and water and plants , inventing games and instructing us on how to play. I am inspired to gambol like an awkward pony jumping over acorns set up by a fairy child in certain alignment. We talk about the faieries, in our adult tones as we enjoy the children’s direct engagement. Another young women joins us for cake saying she has come because she was searching for activities to get involved with nature, the dancers and musician arrive and practice for their evening session adding poetry to all the gestures about us. We take it all in, we enjoy our time here, we feel blessed. We agree that picnics are the best.
When I met Richard and Lisa on their way to the picnic I had been polishing the bronze plaques for FuaimMná these need attention as the codes cannot be read by our phones while they are effervescing verdigris, a beautiful green copper oozing from the bronze – this material action is a reminder that there is always so much more at play in this place than human being.
Ann Dalton performed her Fuaim Mná Poetry Trail between four bridges of the park for a captive audience who came to hear the stories and Ann’s poetry about four women of the Glen. Family members arrived including a man of 91 years and his children, all related to the women from Dillon’s Cross and the Glen. We heard about their brave acts of resistance during war of `Independence and Ann’s imagining and conjurings of their their ordinary and extraordinary lives.
Ann delivered her final poem as the dancers and musician gathered gain for this time for the public performance of Through the Valley She Runs, a new audience assembles at the Yin yang and are brought to the lake by the engineers place.
We follow as the insects come alive from the trees and dancers Helga and Rosa weave patterns in the air, encouraged by a soft drone with vocals from Susan. We see their careful cupping of hands, a gesture that holds water, we see the forms of their echoing bodies, fluid in beiges, suggesting nakedness before the lush green of the park, a feisty gaggle of seagulls squabble behind them lifting on and off the water as the mosquitos fill the air around us.
I miss the leaving as I need to be up in the reception area, we have refreshments arriving warm savoury pastries and wine, teas and cordials. Welcoming in a new audience for the screenings as the dancers and their entourage step in to join us carrying paper lanterns.
Elinor recounts her Ordinary Gifts engagements with the park, describing the connection with our watery natures through divining, the listening to the pucaí, the importance of ritual and play. She forgot to include her experience of embodying a river deity in the pageant where she blessed the invertebrates in human form on their return to the source of the Lee, but we remembered this later.
AnnieMar and Aaron Ross presented their animation Glen Folk, a collection of stores from the Spoon & Bloom encounters in the park.
Dervla Baker presented her short film River rising to the challenge of presenting the voice of the Glen river through film, collaborating with sound artist Neil Quigley they created an evocative and mesmerising 10 minute experience for us – we were brought through passages of light and life and darkness and depth, giving voice to the flow as well as the burdens of the river.
and I tried to sum it all up:
“Botanical Odyssey is a collaborative drawing remembering and imagining plantlife in the Glen. It was created by the participants in a workshop with artist, Julie Forrester and took place at the outset of Gleann a Phúca on 22 September – the day the Púca is said to ride into winter, spitting on the Blackberries, turning the fruit. Since then we have had a year of odyssey and excursions into the park with projects Ordinary Gifts and Spoon & Bloom. We have been spellbound by a host of storytellers about ecology: naturalist Éanna Ní Lamhna, botanist Jo Goodyear, folklorist Jenny Butler, herbalist Eoin Marshall, each in turn has led us through the hidden valley. Birdwatch Ireland Cork introduced us to the particular concert of Glen Birdsong in the valley, The Friends of the Dripsey River brought us monsters magnified from the shallows, those tiny creatures that we examined with Water Officer, Catherine Seale and Scientist Trisha O’Brien are invertebrates that tell us and warn us about our water quality. Historian Gerard O’Brien brought us back to a time, growing up in the Glen, about the Gouldings Fertiliser and industry that supported livelihoods and left residues and about corncrakes and thorneens, now sadly missing from our waters. Elinor Rivers tuned us into the water showing we can all feel the pulse with hazel twitch or metal rod. In our culminating event Annie Mar and Aaron Ross have brought the stories together in their animation “Glen Folk” and Dervla Baker and Neil Quigley have created their short film River in homage to the Glen River. Ann Dalton brings forth the voices of women from the Glen and Helga Deasy performs with the river in a dance that celebrates the river as a source of life, healing and regeneration. We have gained much from our river and it is time now to take more care of the waters that have brought us life and living, the Glen needs our help to ensure its future health, we urgently need to pay attention to what we put into our water from washing, flushing, cleaning: the water carries it all. The river is suffering and can no longer support the bio-diversity it once harboured. The river needs to run a course with healthy banks, we find that we have sealed the surface of its edges with cement and asphalt, encroaching on the river’s safe passage and causing floods when the rains come as they do more heavily now with climate change. We can build rain gardens to work with the flow of water, becoming part of the flow, becoming river – our rain gardens will absorb excess water from our homes and support biodiversity. We can stop using harmful chemicals in our cleaning fluids we can think before we wash and flush – where does it all go? We can pay attention to our drains become more curious about how they work and who cares for them we can own our place in the Water cycle. Our actions make a difference for better of for worse.
Let’s make it better “
With thanks to all who participated in Gleann a’ Phúca
On Friday 20 September we celebrated the Funcheon river it was the morning of Culture Night and the lead up to World Rivers Day – the weather was glorious and we got to see some inhabitants of the River’s waters…
We were introduced to the Lamprey by Andrew Gillespie and his team from Inland Fisheries…
and the stickleback…
Thanks to Glanworth tidy Towns, St. Patrick’s School and LAWPro for supporting the project.
I don’t normally share my diappointments but this one meant a lot to me. Passing the old pottery week in week out on my way to visit my potter mother creatrix of the Bandon Pottery and seeing only a black door with ODM on it and a shabby window of no 83 equally grim, passing the gap with the housing development that took up the space of two generous gardens on the banks of the river and knowing what was once there and hidden from view – available only to those with memories from the last millenium. Yet it did exist, exists stilll on tables and dressers and vintage shops, its material presence sticky in some places.
Gleann a Phúca welcomes the Dripsey Péist on her way back upstream to the source of the Lee.
Picnic in the Park
Roll up to the Glen Park for the Monster Parade and Botanical Odyssey – walking – citizen science – drawing – mapping -riparian plantlore and plantlove – modelling from life – bring a picnic
I have just wrapped up a painting phase with Children in Glanworth – creating signs to celebrate the bio-diversity of the beautiful River Funcheon. We walked the banks in May and gathered information about what we found, we sat on the banks and made drawings from our memory of the walk using botanical inks we talked to local ecologist Fiona about the species we found. back in the classroom 4th and 5th class students worked with their teacher Stephen researching online and creating drawings about their favourite species. I visited the classroom and we mocked up some boards with a collage of images we wanted and we began placing our drawings on the boards, getting a feel for what story each of the 4 boards should tell. The story is in shapes and connections and colour and inter-related lifeforms, and what we know about the history of the place. We had to have an ash leaf to represent our river by name. We had to have the bridge with the 13 arches and the mill wheel , we had to have our nightlife in bats and our nesting swan, our flying creatures and insects, we wanted the boards to show how each creature and plant is dependent on another, local carpenter Richie cut the boards to the shapes we wanted.
has it really been so long? Gleann a Phúca has taken over my world…here is a direct follow up from my last post from our day with Éanna where she suggested we hold the Dawn Chorus in the Glen.. it happened and here is my blog about it on the Gleann a’ Phúca website https://gleannaphuca.ie/dawn-chorus-in-the-glen/
I brought some inks I made from brambles and oak galls foraged in the Glen, modified with vinegar, bread soda and iron
Using the Bramble and oak gall inks we drew images of things we thought we might find in the Glen. After our walk with Éanna we added details that we found on our venture into the Glen.
Additions included a feather worn on one side, a sparrow hawk, hunter spiders that fell around our ears from the tree shaken by Éanna for more see
julforrester 