from TVP
The KinShip Project – Climate Action & TVP, Cork. Below is an interview published on RTE’s online site earlier this year with artists Sean Taylor & Marilyn Lennon (LennonTaylor) introducing The KinShip Project. Sean: When Creative Ireland put out a call for projects for their Creative Climate Action Fund, Marilyn and I were immediately interested as we’d been looking for an opportunity to work together on a creative project of this nature. As creative collaborators, we know we work well together as we jointly developed and ran a master’s programme in socially engaged art practice for over 10 years. In 2021,…
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KinShip Project Launch
The KinShip art project is an ambitious public artwork based in a former landfill site south of Cork City. The aim of this year-long project is to develop a kin-like connection between the non-human inhabitants of Tramore Valley Park and its surrounding community, encouraging people to treat the wider community of life in the park with the same respect we’d extend to members of our own family.
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A Sonic Arrival Ritual for community in Virtual Digital Space, sampling Teach Yourself to Fly from the Meditation Scores of Pauline Oliveros
Rituals for arrival to and departure from a digital shared space. As part of the Conjunction participation on the UNIDEE residency Iliyana Nedkova and I prompted a collective Conjunction reflection on the non-verbal tuning of our attention to each other when coming together in our virtual hub. In ’08 & ’09 I was lucky enough to be a resident on two Deep Listening Retreats with Pauline Oliveros, Ione and Heloise Gold. Pauline Oliveros, American composer and student of John Cage, coined the term Deep Listening to describe a practice of radical attentiveness. Her practice was developed to deepen everyday engagement with sound. She considered…
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PLoT – Thinking About Community Land Trusts
walk/workshop If you’ve had a look at my posts over the last few months you’ll know I’m currently working on a longterm social art project in partnership with artist’s Elinor Rivers and Colette Lewis, the People’s Land Trust (PLoT), in Cork city Ireland. The art project reimagines future sustainability and urban land use by bringing together a radical school and the Community Land Trust model. A Community Land Trust (CLT) is a community-led mechanism for holding land in perpetuity. CLT’s developed out of the ’60’s civil rights movement in the US. A co-ownership model was developed, using an ethic of…
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Update from UNIDEE
Image. Vetch Veg is a community Vegetable garden created in collaboration between residents of the Sandfields in Swansea and the artist Owen Griffiths. Together they created an urban utopia in the centre of the city on the historic ground of the Vetch football field. Over the past three weeks I’ve been a participant on the spring/summer 2021 UNIDEE residency, each Saturday we enjoy a number of hours contact (online) with international artists and thinkers. Andy Abbot, the UNIDEE residency curator, has framed the residency with a set of questions, exploring ‘facets of embedded arts practice as a tool for uncovering, understanding and helping build and…
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CONJUNCTION Readings – VR encounters
As a globally dispersed collective of artists and curators, CONJUNCTION explores concepts of publicness and digitality through commissioning, curating and socially-engaged art, as well as the use of digital spaces. Together we create trans local/national solidarities on a register of scales and timeframes. We meet weekly with members from the EU and US without the logistics of international travel, to talk, read and share. So far we’re grappling with new forms of collaboration and ideation via different tools from Zoom to white board programs such as Miro, and now Mozilla Hubs. Our ongoing research is concerned with the politics, economics,…
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It matters what stories tell stories, it matters what thoughts think thoughts, it matters what worlds, world worlds
I’ve returned to Donna Haraway’s Staying with the Trouble with a new set of ideas underpinning how I hear and understanding what she’s saying – thanks to the Haumea short course. And because of my blackboards I’m stretching and reaching with my body and my mind together. I might have hit on the perfect combination!?
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Haumea in chalk
Cathy Fitzgerald and Nicos Patedakis offer an enormous wealth of experience and content on the online Haumea course – Eco-literacy for Creatives and Art Professionals. I’m a week from finishing the six modules and will, thank goodness, have access to the module content over the coming months. I highly recommend this excellent course to anyone who is thinking about an ecological art practice. An ecoliterate person is prepared to be an effective member of sustainable society, with well‐rounded abilities of head, heart, hands, and spirit, comprising an organic understanding of the world and participatory action within and with the environment.…
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People’s Land Trust (PLoT) to participate on the UNIDEE Residency: Groundwork for Embedded Arts Practice.
PLoT is announced as one of the selected participants on the UNIDEE Residency spring/summer 2021: Groundwork for Embedded Arts Practice. Its been a really busy time and we’ve just been given notice that the Peoples Land Trust PLoT has been invited to participate in this excellent residency. Over the course of ten weeks participants will benefit from perspectives, workshops, and mentoring opportunities from guest practitioners, curators, collectives, arts organisers and academics. Invited guests and case studies include economic geographer and co-author of Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities Professor Katherine Gibson (Australia); artist Jeanne van Heeswijk (the Netherlands); community economies platform The Interdependence (artists Kathrin Böhm, Kate Rich, Bianca…
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CONJUNCTION to participate on the UNIDEE Residency: Groundwork for Embedded Arts Practice.
CONJUNCTION is announced as one of the selected participants on the UNIDEE Residency spring/summer 2021: Groundwork for Embedded Arts Practice. And I’m delighted to be one of the two collective members representing CONJUNCTION. IIiyana Nedkova and I are participating together in this residency bringing back the resources, critique and conversation to the collective. UNIDEE – University of Ideas is the higher educational programme for art and social change of Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto. Weaving together moments of interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and practical activities, the objective of the programme is to provide the participants with inspiration, motivation and instruments to activate or develop artistic initiatives based…
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Landscapes of Daring Political Dreams A Masterclass series with Jeanne van Heeswijk and Phoebe Bahman
Featured Image – Deep Mapping Boreen by PLoT 2021 Starting last Monday I’m lucky enough to be a participant on the current Masterclass hosted by the Fire Station Art Studios and Create, the national development agency for collaborative art. The Masterclass is online over three 2.5hr sessions. One of the tiny advantages of COVID 19 restrictions has been access to online workshops, screenings, seminars, talks and so on. I know it doesn’t replace being in the same room, but getting to the room has so often been my problem. I’m counting my blessings. The Masterclass series is focused on community…
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PlacemakingX Advocate
Delighted to have been made a PlacemakingX Advocate. PlacemakingX are ‘a collective-impact network of placemaking thought leaders, public space activists, regional network leaders, and professionals from all over the world. We have diverse experiences and backgrounds but share a common purpose.’ The #placemaking movement is demonstrating how to turn the shaping of cities upside-down to start with places, and in the process, invent crucial new scalable models for governing, financing, and designing our cities. As leadership towards this goal emerges globally @placemakingx will work together to highlight, connect, and support these people, their ideas, and their projects. “Cities have the…
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Joining Cathy Fitzgerald as a participant on her HAUMEA short online course.
Eco-literacy for creatives Excited to participate in next HAUMEA short course on eco-literacy for creatives run by Dr. Cathy Fitzgerald and Dr. Nikos Patedakis. Cathy is an artist and scientist who has developed a guiding theory-method framework to improve understanding of the value and potential of long-term eco-social art practices that are embedded in communities. This is incredible work, I’m looking forward putting some of that learning into practice in the People’s Land Trust, (PLoT) as our project is creatively problematising the use of urban land and reflecting on custodianship in urban places. Over the course of the art project…
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National Sculpture Factory Cork, Ireland
I’m the new Board Member, and proud to be given an opportunity to contribute to the national cultural landscape. I’m honoured to invited to be one of the newest Board Members of the National Sculpture Factory. The National Sculpture Factory (NSF) is an Irish arts organisation which provides and promotes a supportive and enabling environment for the making of art and the realisation of creative projects. The NSF actively supports artists and their practice through residencies, lecture programmes, cultural exchanges, masterclasses and professional development workshops. I’m looking forward to working together with the other board members to help implement and…
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CONJUNCTION Public Art Curatorial Collective
Announcing a new collective. CONJUNCTION – a globally dispersed collective of 25 mid-career and established curators, artists, designers, educators, and public arts practitioners who first met in January 2020 while attending the year-long professional development course Curating and Commissioning Contemporary Public Art at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. The ‘naming ceremony’ of our collective coincided with the rare interplanetary event of 21 December 2020 known as the great conjunction when the two planets Jupiter and Saturn appeared closest together in the sky and visible to the naked eye. The nine founding members of CONJUNCTION are Marilyn Lennon, Iliyana Nedkova, Julie…
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People’s Land Trust Project progress report
Excerpt from the report written for the COMMISSIONING AND CURATING CONTEMPORARY PUBLIC ART course with Valand Academy at the University of Gothenburg. The progress report outlines the work undertaken through 2020 on the People’s Land Trust art project. As the climate becomes wetter and tides higher, Cork city centre is undergoing a difficult transition. A river runs into the city splits and re-joins, exiting the city centre into Cork Harbour. This tidal river and the hills to the north and south create a basin that floods more and more often, damaging businesses and homes. Protesters claim that engineering works, proposed to…
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Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art, University of Gothenburg
A year of professional development comes to a close. Over the past year I’ve been a participant on the continuing professional development course, Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art by Valand Academy at University of Gothenburg, in partnership with Public Art Agency Sweden and the University of Arts Helsinki. I highly recommend the online course to anyone interested in art in the public realm. We were a group of twenty-five globally dispersed mid-career and established curators, artists, designers, educators, and public arts practitioners, which in itself, was an amazing resource. We examined the processes and frameworks that operate when art…
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Awarded – Arts Council of Ireland, Arts Participation Project Award funding (2021)
I’m delighted to write that the Peoples Land Trust art project I’ve been working on in partnership with artists Colette Lewis and Elinor Rivers has been successful in its application to the Arts Council of Ireland for Arts Participation Project Award funding. The project is growing a presence in Cork city and we’re looking forward to an ambitious 2021. Marilyn Lennon’s website
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PLoT School hosts screening of Holding Ground documentary.
Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street This inspiring film chronicles the decade-long struggle of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) and community members of the Roxbury section of Boston to transform their neighborhood from one of vacant lots used for illegal dumping, red-lining by banks, and misguided city planning. Through retrospective interviews with community residents, activists, organizers, and city officials, the film highlights the grassroots community organizing efforts of this multi-ethnic (African-American, Latino, Cape Verdean, and European-American), low income community. The efforts of community residents include organizing against illegal dumping, clearing a neighborhood park of drug dealing, and supporting…
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Self Organised Architecture
Developing People’s Land Trust project associates. The People’s Land Trust is delighted to meet Tom O’Donnell of Self Organised Architecture. SOA’s work involves research into collaborative housing models, publishing their research in a series of bite-sized zines which will be combined into a ‘Manual For Cohousing in Ireland’. They run co-housing events and seminars. SOA have also created a new section to their website, focused on the EU Community Land Trust project , which they are engaged in as Irish partners for 2020-2021. Looking forward to continued engagement, this includes joining their series of online Cafe’s over the coming months.…
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MA Social Practice and the Creative Environment MA SPACE
Limerick School of Art and Design, Limerick Institute of Technology Early in 2020 as joint programme leaders, Sean Taylor and I decided to move MA SPACE online. The Masters programme was in its 10th year, an interesting moment. In early spring we were forced to find ways to deliver the programme and maintain our learning community online due to a COVID 19 lockdown here in Ireland. The experience led us both to believe that an online version of the programme is viable and in fact a positive move, particularly to reach people who might not otherwise be able to consider…
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