Take Me to the River: AGRICULTURE_HABITAT_REWILD
Location: River Nanny from Staffordstown towards Kentstown
Date: Sunday 27 September
Time: 9:30am - 2pm
Price: Free, booking essential
Participants: Adults & teens (over 16)
This community event seeks to identify the rewilding potential of riparian zones along sections of the River Nanny. The workshop will bring together landowners, residents and relevant stakeholders to explore motivations and incentives for participating in rewilding initiatives, discussing the collective benefits of restoring ecological integrity along this river corridor.
Guided by scientist Colas Chervier, forager & herbalist Jenny Boylan, and Cineál, follow the Nanny River as it meanders through farmlands from Staffordstown towards Kentstown. Identifying wild flora, fungi and riverside trees, exchange traditional, modern and herbal uses for foraged plant life, and learn methods of collecting and preserving them safely and sustainably.
Exploring the benefits of a thriving river ecology through artistic and mapping exercises, discuss the collective actions to directly improve riverside biodiversity, making a creative record of species found and not present. A sectional map presented by Cineál will allow participants to record the reality of the riparian buffer zone and its potential future impact from river to the sky.
A diversity of voices will contribute to this walk of discovery, sharing histories, ownership and actions by custodians of this part of the Crystal Valley.
Accessibility: The location of this event includes uneven, rough terrain and is not accessible for wheelchair users. If you have any mobility requirements, please contact Deirdre before booking so we can clarify access. Deirdre.rogers@solsticeartscentre.ie
Structured Actions: Exploring motivations, incentives and identifying ameliorate zones available for small scale re-wilding along the River Nanny; Foraging - traditional, modern and herbal uses; documenting native and invasive species.
Facilitators:
Colas Chervier holds a PhD in Economics and is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Finance, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick. He specialises in the evaluation of policies and interventions for natural resource conservation and sustainable land management, with a particular focus on economic incentives such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). At UL, Colas designs and implements surveys and behavioural experiments to evaluate the impact of PES schemes aimed at encouraging changes in Irish farmers’ practices. His research seeks to understand how these schemes can be more effectively designed to support land sparing for nature and promote nature restoration, especially along Irish rivers and within commonage landscapes. He is involved in The Waters of LIFE, an EU LIFE Integrated Project (IP) which aims to help reverse the deterioration of Ireland's most pristine waters, with the ongoing loss of high-status waters among the most concerning, protracted and persistent water quality trend in Ireland. https://www.watersoflife.ie/
Jenny Boylan is a forager, wildcrafter, apprentice herbalist, and author of The Beginner Forager’s Calendar series. She currently works on the Heritage Council’s Heritage in Schools Programme, helping to build awareness and appreciation for Ireland’s rich natural heritage among primary school students. Having grown up on a farm in Louth, she has a lifelong love of nature but began to develop a deep knowledge of wild plants while living in Palestine, where traditional practices of gathering and eating seasonal wild plants and working with them for medicine are still strong. This living tradition deeply inspired a return to plants in Ireland and a commitment to sharing that knowledge with others.
Cineál Research + Design is a collaborative practice between architects Phoebe Brady and Sarah Doheny. The Irish word for kind: they believe in the potential to design in a more thoughtful and considered way, understanding the experience of architectural, urban and rural spaces; how and why they make us feel a certain way. Cineál uses alternative forms of mapping to extract information from landscapes and urban environments. Methods include, but not limited to walking, drawing, photography and sound recording.
Working with Solstice Arts Centre on Take Me to the River 2024, they are expanding their collaboration this year, facilitating experimental forms of mapping to understand the iterative ecology between communities and their environments within the project. Introducing sectional drawings for each site to narrate the ecosystem from the riverbed to the treetops, together with workshop participants they will create an accessible record of the river’s environmental condition, specific to a place and time. Guiding qualitative surveying exercises of observation and listening through drawing and notation within each public workshop, participants are contributing to the ‘Creative Catchment Map’, developing in 2024 to record information, activities and scientific enquiry.