Take Me To The River
Take Me to the River, a creative public engagement project bringing communities together in the fostering and long-term preservation of the waterbodies in Meath, launches on May 8 in Solstice Arts Centre. The project includes a series of free workshops in May, June, and July, ending with an exhibition in Swift Cultural Centre, Trim in Autumn.
What is Take Me to the River?
A collaborative vision between Solstice Arts Centre, Navan and Cineál Research & Design Architects, Take Me to the River is a creative public engagement project bringing communities together in the fostering and long-term preservation of our local waterbodies in County Meath. It combines artistic activities, scientific knowledge, and playful activism, to raise awareness about our relationships and responsibilities to our local waterways as citizens and residents of the county.
Join us with a network of artists and environmental experts engaged in research and community participation, and experience our rivers from a creative perspective through a series of free workshops in May, June, and July. Listen, create, record, and engage within local areas of the Boyne and River Nanny. Collectively respond by mapping these sites through print, sound, film, sculpture, and spoken word for a ‘Creative Catchment Map’, a visual, sensory and audio display to celebrate and expand knowledge of our natural water resources.
Launch & Information Evening
Wednesday 8 May, 6-7:30pm at Solstice Arts Centre | All Welcome, booking required
Booking Link: Solstice Arts Centre | Take Me to the River Launch & Information Session
Join us at Solstice to hear more about this immersive community project, meet the artists, and find out how you can get involved.
Get Involved
Following the launch on 8 May, sign-up for a series of free workshops bringing members of the public together to learn, create, and creatively map local areas of the Boyne River catchment. With informative engagement from our artists and environmental experts, these outdoor workshops invite members of the public to learn about and share their experiences and relationship with the river. In May, take a sensory ‘art walk’ exploring the relationship of watercourse, soil and agriculture on the River Nanny. Experience the dusk chorus from the urban setting of the Ramparts, or use print, camera and drone footage to study the Boyne river’s ecology from beneath and above at Swifts Wave, Trim.
WORKSHOP 1: The River Nanny – Water, Soil, Sculpture
Saturday 25 May, 9:30am – 2pm | Free, booking essential
Booking Link: Solstice Arts Centre | The River Nanny: Water, Soil, & Sculpture
Facilitators: Artist Penelope Lacey, Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine + Farmer Michael Monaghan, and
Fionnuala McCabe, Fisheries Protection Officer, Inland Fisheries Ireland with Research & Design Practice Cineál.
Theme: Art walk exploring the relationship of watercourse, soil and agriculture.
To acknowledge the UN International Day for Biological Diversity (May 22), which aims to increase recognition of the significant challenges human activities pose to biological diversity, Staffordstown House invites you to follow the River Nanny as it runs through the local surrounding farmland. Take a sensory ‘art walk’ exploring the relationship of watercourse, soil and agriculture.
Artist and resident Penelope Lacey will lead participants on a river walk with Fionnuala McCabe of Inland Fisheries Ireland; passing through fields, crossing the river, pausing to absorb and discuss the rich biodiversity surrounding and within the water. Landowner and farmer Michael Monaghan will join the walking workshop to bring a unique perspective and understanding of a sustainable cohabitation of nature and agriculture, observing the conditions that allow both to thrive.
Pausing at its banks, touch and gather natural clay and materials, abundant at this time of year. Under Penelope’s artistic guidance, participants will be encouraged to explore texture, form and colour producing creative responses to the land and water.
Observations and clay creations made by participants will be collected for inclusion in the ‘Creative Catchment Map’ and exhibited at the Swift Cultural Centre, Trim in October.
WORKSHOP 2: The Boyne Ramparts – Ecology, Sound & Written Word
Saturday 8 June, 8pm – 10pm | Free, booking essential
Booking Link: Solstice Arts Centre | The Boyne Ramparts: Ecology, Sound, & Written Word
Facilitators: Artist Grace Collender, Terence Cassidy from BirdWatch Ireland, Meath, Eimear Clowry Delaney, Wild
about Navan with Research & Design Practice Cineál.
Theme: A dusk chorus walk along the Ramparts, Navan exploring ecology, sound & written word.
Using listening and field recording exercises with Cineál, tune in to the banks of the Boyne, and explore the surrounding natural ecologies with Terence Cassidy as he identifies the birds; their song, sounds, meaning and intent. Sharing collected stories from this local waterway, Grace Collender will facilitate creative writing exercises, recording our experiences of the river, its sounds and systems. As we walk, Eimear Clowry Delaney will identify Irish language names of plants, trees, animals, and fields, evocatively describing the local habitat and biodiversity of
this bountiful watercourse.
This event will appeal to nature lovers with a curiosity and desire to explore our natural urban amenity in a creative way, identifying sounds we may otherwise miss at the closing of the day. Participants will be encouraged to draw, write and share their own previous and newly discovered relationship to the river.
Immersed in poetry and local sounds of this rich resource, we will consider our responsibility to place and identify the environmental challenges surrounding the water that demand our intervention.
Sounds, written words and observations contributed by participants will be collected for inclusion in the ‘Creative Catchment Map’, and exhibited at the Swift Cultural Centre, Trim in October.
WORKSHOP 3: The River Boyne – Above, Along, Within
Saturday 6 July, 9:30am – 2pm | free, booking essential
Booking Link: Solstice Arts Centre | The River Boyne: Above, Along, & Within
Facilitators: Artists Cosette Olohan, Jules Charlton & Ronan Colcannon, Environmental Scientist Goska Wilkowska
with Research & Design Practice Cineál.
Theme: Transecting the Boyne – explore the river from land, sky and water.
Guided by artists Cosette Olohan, Jules Charlton and Ronan Colcannon, experience a series of photographic processes, creating with and of the water. Using print, camera and drone footage the workshop’s lens will study the river’s ecology from the surface and above. Enhancing this multi-layered workshop, Environmental Scientist Goska Wilkowska, will share expert knowledge of the species and habitats that are present and absent from the river.
Used to monitor the health of the earth’s biospheres, this workshop is inspired by transect sampling techniques used in ecology since the 1930s. Using key photographic developments – cyanotype (19th century), 35mm film photography (20th century) and high definition digital imaging (21st century), participants will experience the documentation of ecology from the 1800s to the present day, as the river itself transects the landscape and our community over thousands of years.
Introducing the origins of cyanotype print, and its application as one of the earliest forms of photographic processes, on the river’s edge Cosette Olohan will lead a hands-on printing workshop. Gather and capture silhouettes of the surrounding waters vegetation from organic materials to produce your own site-specific artwork similar to botanists over a hundred years ago.
Cinematographers, Jules Charlton and Ronan Concannon will demonstrate techniques in digital image making using drone and underwater digital photography. These unique perspectives and the imagery you capture will enable us to analyse the traces of human impact or rewilding on natural habitats, fish stocks and birdlife within close proximity to the area.
The cyanotype prints will be collected and digital imagery processed for inclusion in the ‘Creative Catchment Map’, and exhibited at the Swift Cultural Centre, Trim in October.
