'We'll just have to find a home for Goldie Fish," says Martha Bowers. Standing beside a 25-foot goldfish with members of Cork Community Artlink Group, the American choreographer allows her thoughts to stray beyond Saturday, when dancers, musicians and other performers will take over the Shandon area of Cork

Hanging in the group's space in Shandon, Goldie Fish is a copy of the fish on top of the steeple beside us; he will head the parade that opens the day's activities.

Although still eyeless (but with a fully functioning jaw), he looks impressive, and deserves to be allowed to hang around Shandon after the weekend.

Back at the Institute for Choreography and Dance at Firkin Crane, Bowers rattles off the events that form the Safe Harbour project, part of Cork's Midsummer Festival.

"The day will open with a parade of the 25-foot fish, a river cloth and lots of small golden fish on sticks, with music by the Butter Exchange Brass Band. After that, the fish will get hauled up to a prominent position for the day.

"The street fair will continue in Firkin Crane and O'Connell Square, where there'll be an outdoor stage and booths with storytellers. There are three local children's theatre groups performing plays based on local characters.

"It will end with a final parade leading to the steps of Firkin Crane, where there'll be an interdenominational blessing of the event. We'll do a kind of opening-ceremony performance outside the building, then the audience will come inside for an hour-long performance."

Although she is ultimately responsible for the day, Bowers seems unfazed by the scale of the events, and there is little sense of panic with just days to go. Some technical glitches need to be ironed out in the theatre and a bit more work done on the costumes, but that's it. It doesn't even need to be sunny. "We have a rain plan, just in case, so nobody will miss anything if the skies open."

She knows all about the hazards of rain, as her experience of this type of community work began in 1983, when she first came to Ireland, to work in Wexford during its Movement Month festival.

Based around Cathy O'Kennedy's community programme with Barefoot Dance Company and Wexford Arts Centre, the festival involved different strands of the community in the creation and performance of dance work.

Having discovered this new way of working and thinking about her art, Bowers returned year after year. In contrast to the atmosphere of the self-important New York dance scene, the visits made her aware of the importance of interacting with her constituency.

In the US, audiences came to her show, clapped and went home. In Ireland, she could drink, talk and dance with them.

By 1992 she had decided to apply her Wexford experiences at home, creating a community dance project in New York state. Working in the town of Red Hook, where her husband, Charlie, has a stained-glass business, she mounted a series of site-specific works on the waterfront.

The performances and the arts-education programmes that fed into them have played their part in the rejuvenation of the area. Now there is the Red Hook Partnership, a group of artists, educators, social workers and businessmen who meet regularly not only to plan cultural events, but also to discuss how those events can play a part in broader urban renewal.

Safe Harbour was one such project. First performed in 1998, it looked at New York's immigrant history, both of the older Irish and Italians and the more recent Hispanics and African-Americans.

Now it has been transplanted to the harbour from where many of the Irish immigrants departed. "Things have sort of gone full circle, from Wexford to Brooklyn and back to Cork," Bowers muses.

The transplant appears a success. Although Shandon and Brooklyn seem poles apart, they share many issues. Both are communities trying to gain recognition within a large city and both lack social amenities. And, of course, there is immigration.

"Ireland has changed so much since I : it's so enriching. We had a number of asylum seekers come to our workshops, and I found their stories and experiences really interesting," she says.

"One of the great things to happen was that a few of them got together with some other local musicians during the workshops and formed a group. Now they can't participate in Safe Harbour because they've got a gig on Saturday. I'll obviously miss their input in the performance, but it's great they're doing what they love and becoming quite successful at it."

Working with Tiye Giraud, her musician, she sees her role as choreographer extending beyond setting steps.

"I suppose I think of choreography as event planning. It's not just about steps on stage, in time and space, but how you take a location and the people within it and choreograph people's actions over a particular period of time. It has social as well as artistic implications."

Projects such as Safe Harbour take time to develop, not just in putting everything together, but also, more importantly, in gaining the trust and confidence of the community. Also, it's not just a day-long event but an ongoing process, celebrating Shandon and bringing together arts organisations working in the area.

With luck, the dialogue that has begun during the project will continue long after, and the arts groups will have more collaborative relationships with the communities in which they are working.

But someone has to keep an eye on things. After testing the length of the sticks on the windsock fish and confirming that the fire juggler will be along at noon, we go over to Shandon Craft Centre for a coffee. Its bright, high-ceilinged hall Martha Bowers looks on as Olase Freeman and Shannon Kimmel rehearse for Safe Harbour.