Mapping, Listening, Seeding and Singing

How Tóchar Community Stories is working to capture the stories of people living by the     Midland wetlands in its mission to support community engagement. Curator Helen Shaw shares what they are doing.

We had an extraordinary moment on Cloncrow Bog, Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath the other day. Volunteer Ethos leader (Everything Tyrrellspass Has On Show)  Eugene Dunbar and artist Annie Holland had taken the 4th class of St Anne’s Primary School in the village on a bog walk combining nature and creativity. They listened to birdsong, got to know the chiffchaff distinctive call and Eugene said the little chiffchaff had flown all the way from Africa to nest in our Spring, they found and identified bog rosemary, the Offaly flower, and the tiny sundew, popular with the children as it can eat insects. As the children gathered for a welcome lunch on the boardwalk looking out to the high bog, an imposing figure out on the loop on a sunny day came by. It was local singing priest and celebrity Fr Ray Kelly with Barney, his dog. Fr Ray became well known through his appearance on Dancing with the Stars in 2020 but he’s been ‘a singing priest’ for over a decade, often at weddings, and within moments he’d happily agreed to an impromptu performance of a song he’s made his own, Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah and the boardwalk was turned into a stage with the children as his choir. Even Barney got involved.

Part of the Tóchar Midlands Wetlands Restoration project, Tóchar Community Stories is a two year initiative focussed on people, place and belonging.  Our work is about the people living by the bogs, peatlands and wetlands and the connection between their lives and nature restoration. In a Just Transition social, environment and economic well-being knit together so social dialogue is as important as ecological recovery. Groups like Ethos and Eugene Dunbar have become community custodians of their wetlands and our work is about using storytelling and creative practice to support community resilience and widen engagement.

With St Anne’s 4th Class Eugene started the conversation with Ms Lynch about the children co-creating a new boardwalk panel at the entrance to Cloncrow Bog. We partnered artist Annie Holland with the class and she’s working with them on imagining that new panel and the stories they want to tell to visitors entering the loop. Eugene did a wonderful bog biodiversity talk with the class showcasing the bog story from turf (some 80% of the children said they still used it for fuel at home as many of these families would have turbary rights) to nature restoration and carbon sequestration. They used the handy IPCC raised bog swatches that show and tell bog cotton, bog asphodel, heathers and sundews and Eugene shared the story of the Iron Age Croghan bog body that connected with Amber who lives in Croghan and one of the boys in the class told how his grandfather had been among the men who found that body over 20 years ago.  The ‘Old Croghan Man’ dates to 200-400 BC.

The week after the classroom session Ms Lynch’s class took to the bog loop with Eugene and Annie and had the task of finding, identifying and even drawing the bog nature, bringing citizen science and art together.

In the afternoon the children worked with Annie on beginning to shape what they had seen, experienced and felt and after Easter she’ll return to work with them again to complete the project. We may stay with the children through the year and hopefully get to bring them to the National Museum to see for themselves the bog bodies and treasures. These children hopefully will develop their own relationship with the bog and its wonders; some talked of the birdsong, other of the trees bordering the bog while several loved history and what the land holds buried.

Our work in Tóchar Community Stories has adopted a collaborative pathway of mapping, listening and seeding. In the first half of this year we’re doing a lot of listening, simply meeting people, building relationships and getting to understand their sense of place and belonging. We’ve eight counties in the region so we’ve naturally tried to focus on several places, like Tyrrellspass, to begin and grow and to gradually, as we are doing with the 4th Class, to seed ways of working and exploring, creating community stories.

Another place we’ve been working is Kilteevan, Co Roscommon where the Tidy Towns group, led by Eileen Fahey has done phenomenal work in taking care of their local bog, Cloonlarge Bog, at Lough Ree SAC. Eileen and her colleagues are, like Eugene and Ethos, incredible local volunteers who have invested time, energy and passion in nature and developing the bog loop for everyone to enjoy. On our first visit in January we met Roscommon runners enjoying it, grandparents taking their grandchildren to see the Gulliver statue with the family play area created by Eileen’s group, and lone walkers just seeking a respite from the world.

Working with Eileen and Finbar Spellman of the Kilteevan Community Development Group  we gradually moved to seed a photography ‘place and belonging’ workshop led by artist Shane Hynan where Shane ran a full day workshop starting in the morning in the beautiful old church that serves as a community centre and then practical photo capturing work on the bog loop before returning to the centre for hot drinks and story and photo sharing. Shane’s artistic work draws on the typography of the bog lands and he comes from close to Knockirr Bog, a community owned bog at Carbury, Co Kildare. Shane’s own photo of Eileen on the photo+bog walk captures the communal fun and creative essence of the day.

Next steps for us include audio storytelling with the Mountbellew Men’s Shed group who meet at the Living Bog, Galway as well as connecting artists like Luke Casserly, who comes from Lanesborough, Co Longford and draws on his own family’s Bord na Móna heritage, to places like Carbury, Co Kildare. We’re working with Kilcormac town, and the communities of Lemanaghan and Walsh Island in Co. Offaly and with the Abbeyleix Bog Project in Abbeyleix, Co Laois where they are marking twenty-five years of community bog work this year. We’ve dates with other communities in Co.Tipperary and additional ones in Co Roscommon, so while we’re moving to seeding ideas and co-creations in places like Tyrrellspass, Kilteevan, Mountbellew and Carbury we’re still very much mapping and listening to new conversations with people across the region. And hopefully there will be more songs!    If you’re like to know more do email us tócharstories@gmail.com