Restricted to a 2km or 5km radius during lockdowns, many people began to discover, or rediscover, forgotten elements of their locality.
“The pandemic has been tough on everyone but I do think it has given people a greater appreciation of who we are, and the role our heritage plays in understanding that,” says Valerie Kelly of the Heritage Council. Kelly has recently begun a new role as head of community engagement, a position that was established to ensure that heritage professionals and volunteers are aware of, and engaging with, the available supports from the Heritage Council. “Volunteers and community groups are at the heart of heritage preservation and promotion throughout Ireland.”
The Heritage Council is building on its work to improve access to heritage activities, in particular with people with disabilities, minority groups, new communities and the Traveller community. “This has included work with people living in Direct Provision, people currently seeking refugee status and the National Council for the Blind, amongst others. We have also asked people to forward projects for funding in the community heritage scheme and we’ve had some entries from the Traveller community and we have also worked with a Jewish heritage community group in Cork,” Kelly says.
The Heritage Council is seeking to address the whole issue of climate change. With this in mind, community groups are being encouraged to engage with relevant projects.
Funding projects and opportunities will be announced early next year, but in the meantime, here are a handful of inspirational projects and programmes that have received Heritage Council funding.
Starting with a 2012 application to take part in the RTE television series Local Heroes, the Kells Local Heroes Group decided to stick together. As group member Mark Smith recalls, “Kells was in a bad way about ten years ago - there was a lot of dereliction, heritage wasn’t being fully celebrated, and the sense of community had waned because things became a bit run down. The group got together and decided the first thing they would do was tackle some of the unsightly buildings in the town.”
In the space of five years, 65 properties were painted, and the group started running conferences to learn from people in places like Westport, and other areas, on how they transformed their town. These conferences looked at town development and planning, the greening of Kells, how community spirit, volunteerism, arts and culture can transform a town.
Kells Local Heroes Group began working with the Irish Walled Towns Network through the Heritage Council, which led to the transformation of John Street and Castle Street. “Every property was painted, old sash windows were put back in buildings, it really lifted the main thoroughfare. We’d have 60 or 70 volunteers on any given day. All these things really built a sense of pride.”
For Heritage Week 2021, the group focused on celebrating the 1,500th anniversary of St Colmcille. “When writing books, Colmcille and his monks were writing in Latin. Joe Public couldn’t read Latin, they couldn’t read or write,” Smith says. “The only way the monks could get the awe and spectacle of God across was through the awe and spectacle of colour. Colour was their communication. They were illuminated pages. People had never seen colour like this before.”
Knowing Meath County Council had purchased nine projectors, used mostly around Christmas and St Patrick’s Day to project images onto buildings, Smith asked to use these off-season and secured six. With Stephen Dullaghan of SpudGun Design, they created six visuals telling the story of Colmcille and Kells, which were projected onto key buildings, such as the old courthouse, St Columb’s House and the round tower, for a full month. “The community response has been fantastic,” he says.
Next up is looking at how dance and poetry can be celebrated at key locations in Kells, hopefully for Colmcille’s actual birth date on December 7. “It’s something we’ll build on every year.”
Between Foxford and Castlebar, you’ll find the Penal church where Michael Davitt was christened, and the adjoining graveyard where he is buried. Appropriately, the site is now a heritage museum that transports visitors back to the 19th century, and specifically the land war, with artefacts, letters, photographs and guided tours chronicling Davitt’s life and leadership.
Since 2014, the Michael Davitt Museum has worked with the Heritage Council in the Museum Standards Programme for Ireland (MSPI), which guides and helps museums of all sizes.
Through a series of workshops covering museum and collection management, public services, visitor care and access, each museum comes up with a strategic plan, gradually working towards full accreditation. Fully accredited museums are listed online and also include the Thomas MacDonagh Museum, The National Maritime Museum and the National Gallery of Ireland.
Curator Yvonne Corcoran Loftus led the Michael Davitt Museum through the programme. “The MSPI required us to produce a five-year strategic management plan and a series of annual action plans. This provided the museum with a timetable and a structure for achieving objectives on an ongoing basis. It has also proved to be an essential vehicle in terms of accessing funding for the museum.”
There’s plenty happening at the Mayo museum, which opens seven days a week. “We hope to focus on Michael Davitt’s campaigns for social justice, thus elevating him into a global figure comparable with Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King,” explains Corcoran Loftus, who has already met with the Gandhi New Delhi Museum to progress the twinning of the two museums.
They are also in the planning process to construct an auditorium and international research centre on the grounds, planning a sensory garden and polytunnel, while also dealing with a significant increase in genealogical queries since the pandemic began.
From Lego in Glendalough to Old Irish Goats in Mulranny
Under the Community Grant Scheme, the Heritage Council supports a diverse range of projects, from local heritage surveys, to steam engine restoration, the provision of resources on local place names, and even LEGO building.
Currently artist Jessica Farrell is completing a large, transportable LEGO model of the monastic settlement at Glendalough, on behalf of the Glendalough Heritage Forum, which depicts everyday life in the 12th century.
The project has received €9,900 in funding through the Heritage Council's Community Grant Scheme, and is expected to attract and hold the interest of new audiences, encouraging immersive experiences.
Meanwhile, in Mayo, the Old Irish Goat Society (OIGS) is embarking on a conservation grazing initiative with bearded Old Irish Goats, which are critically endangered.
Their pilot project, which received €15,000 in funding under the scheme, puts grazing goats to work tackling the spread of gunnera tinctoria. This rural community’s mammoth task is also documented in the newly-opened The Old Irish Goat Visitor Centre in Mulranny.
In 2021, €1.6m was awarded under the Heritage Council’s Community Grant Scheme, up from €539,000 in 2020. The average grant awarded under the scheme is €8,000. “2021 has seen a healthy restoration of the available funding to community groups,” says Paula Drohan, head of finance at the Heritage Council.
“This restoration of funding to €1.6m needs to be maintained and grown in line with the appetite for funding that exists in community groups.”
The next scheme will open in early 2022, and Drohan is keen to stress the fantastic support of the 31 heritage officers working in city and county local authorities.
“Each heritage officer is a very important pillar in supporting local community groups to develop ideas for funding, which are aligned to each local authority’s heritage plan, and the officers also provide a link back to other local authority funding also.”