Take Me to the River: COMMUNITY_SEED_SOIL – A Compost Carnival

Location: Athboy Community Allotments, Athboy 
Date: Sunday 25 May 
Time: 10am - 12:30pm
Price: Free, booking essential 
Participants: All ages 

Click here to find out more about Take Me to the River.

Celebrating Biodiversity Week, explore composting in this hands-on carnival with creatives Mary Hoy, Sophie Rieu and Rachel Dempsey. Pairing with Boyne River Trust and Athboy Allotments, return to the Earth through attunement exercises, foraging, and the creation of compost “cocktails” which will then be used on Athboy Allotment for the improvement and nourishing of the soil. Involving three stages; perception, foraging procession, and compost creation, Ryan Wilson Parr of Boyne Rivers Trust will present their Boyne Floodplain Woodlands Project, exploring the saplings growing on-site, to be planted out later in the year along the Boyne River plains.

Documenting the carnival procession, Cineál will create a handheld sectional map for participants to record the composting process, foraged riparian flora and personal perspectives embodying the carnival characters created. These perspectives will contribute to the ever growing ‘Creative Catchment Map’ to record information, activities and scientific enquiry.

Accessibility:
The location of this workshop includes grass paths and semi-rough terrain. If you have any mobility requirements, please contact Deirdre before booking so we can clarify access. Deirdre.rogers@solsticeartscentre.ie

Structured Actions:
Introduction to community initiatives such as riparian planting to reduce polluted run-off entering the river. Education on organic composting, soil improvement, sustainable food growth and community reduction of chemical use and water contaminants.

Facilitators:

Mary Hoy is a Meath farmer’s daughter, multi-disciplinary artist, activist and recent graduate from NCAD. Her practice investigates our current neoliberal reality through the lens of ecofeminism, leading to creative, practical solutions to promote transformative ways to combat climate change. Her key themes relate to our interaction with soil, regenerative farming, women in farming (Talamh Beo), rural sustainability, food security, improving urban/rural relationships, and public urban food growing. Mary is a co-founder of the Breaking Cover Collective. Facilitating workshops in 2023-24 to international teachers in ‘Dig Deeper - Where Science and Art Meet’ and ‘‘Fusing Art and Science’ in the Botanic Gardens, Dublin, she also collaborated with artist Åsa Sonjasdotter in the 40th EVA International Biennial, Limerick.

Sophie Rieu is a dancer, writer, community herbalist, forager and a biodynamic craniosacral therapist. She was an environmental and social journalist, a press officer for Green MEP Patricia McKenna, and founded and designed the eco womenswear label ‘Unicorn’ in 2003, pioneering ethically made green fashion in Ireland for 15 years. She is a co-founder of the Breaking Cover Collective, a series of ecological enquiries hosted and sponsored by IMMA and facilitated by Paola Catizone in 2021. Trained as a community herbalist with The Plant Medicine school in Hollyfort, Co Wexford, she is currently studying to become a clinical herbalist. Sophie mixes her movement, craniosacral attuning skills and herbal/foraging knowledge to facilitate attunement and foraging workshops.

Rachel Dempsey is a singer, facilitator/educator, ethnomusicologist and activist. She runs Full Circle Change, a project promoting Connection, Wisdom & Resilience and Thriving People & Planet through nature connection, singing and education around climate justice and regenerative approaches. Passionate about societal transformation, she weaves creativity and the arts into her activism, wellbeing promotion and education work. Completing an MA in Ethnomusicology she is currently studying a Masters in Climate, Justice and Sustainability with MIC.

Ryan Wilson-Parr is Head of Ecological Assessment, National Parks and Wildlife, and voluntary advisor to Boyne Rivers Trust. Based in Slane, Co Meath, he is an accredited Ecologist with more than 15 years’ experience in ecological monitoring, impact assessment and conservation, with a special interest in ecological restoration and reintroductions.

Cineál Research + Design is a collaborative architectural practice led by Phoebe Brady and Sarah Doheny since 2021. The studio explores the experiential qualities of the built environment through a practice of mapping and observation. Their design work and research explores the relationships of materials and ecology in the design and creation of spatial experiences. Cineál identifies as an environmentally sensitive practice where drawing, designing and building processes are rooted in place, connecting local landscape knowledge, ecology, geology, climate and weather. 

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. 

They will be guiding qualitative surveying exercises through observation, drawing and listening within each public workshop which will contribute to the ‘Creative Catchment Map’, developed in 2024 to record information, activities, and scientific enquiry.

Boyne Rivers Trust was set up in October 2021 as a not-for-profit organisation to protect, enhance and restore the water bodies of the Boyne catchment through community-led projects and actions. Supporting their Boyne Vision (2022-23) which outlines the need for ‘deeper educational opportunities for all residents within the Boyne catchment to understand and value the river’, creative public engagements will be initiated within TMTTR 2025-26. Combining artistic activities, scientific knowledge and public activism, these will initially focus on the BRT Floodplain Woodlands Project and Special Area of Conservation, the River Boyne and River Blackwater. www.boyneriverstrust.ie/woodlands

Athboy Community Allotments is a place of wellbeing for all its members, growing food and flowers without the use of chemicals or pesticides, located beside the playground at Cow Park, Athboy.