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, among others. We have also asked people to forward projects for funding in the community heritage scheme and we’ve had some entries from the Travelling community and we have also worked with a Jewish heritage community group in Cork,” Kelly says.
And, of course, there is the climate crisis. “We are looking to address climate change and biodiversity projects and are encouraging community groups to engage in projects in those areas to help address the crisis,” Kelly says.
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.
Heroic changes and illuminating ideas in Kells
Starting with a 2012 application to take part in the RTÉ 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 such as 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 sixty or seventy volunteers on any given day. All these things really built a sense of pride and community.”
For Heritage Week 2021, the group focused on celebrating the 1500th 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 on to 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 birth date on December 7th. “It’s something we’ll build on every year.”
Preserving museum collections for future generations
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 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 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.
Planting seeds around the country
“Local communities best know their biology and geology,” says environmental educator Ted Cook. “We are the primary stakeholders to secure, guard and defend it as our climate wobbles.”
Though his work seems especially pertinent now, Cook has been tree nursing since 1979, visiting schools and, with Macroom District Environmental Group since 1985, has been part of heritage in schools programme for over twenty years. As part of the Heritage Council-funded programme, Cook visits schools around the country, takes class groups on botany walks, and even helps them create mini tree nurseries, starting with the collection of seeds in the autumn.
Cook stokes interest in what he identifies as our 27 native trees, 1,331 lichens, 500 moss species in Munster, 41 ferns, 817 vascular flowering plants, and all the living creatures that can be found among them. Scholars are guided from identifying, to sourcing and sowing wild cherry, oaks, holly, hazel, spindle, crab apples and sweet chestnut. “I try to impart that we have to be even more careful with our native trees, because we just don’t have an awful lot and they need us.” Climate anxiety does rear its head, older children ask questions. “It is a very scary prospect and there is a growing number of questions asking ‘is there a future?’ This has to be managed. No fairy tales and fables, but I would never paint a picture. Because I would scare myself as well.”
Cook says school children respond very well on nature walks. “They light up. They feel safe, and they feel they belong – that’s very important.” He sees the role of heritage specialists as bringing joy. He invites those who experience climate despair to join one of the Sunday group walks he organises. “Try to get out and get active, if you can. It’s always good to bring a picnic, with enough for sharing. A number of colleagues would say to me ‘wake up Ted, planting a tree is a drop on a hot stone’, but I disagree. Diana Beresford-Kroeger says every native plant we plant makes a difference. I carry that in my heart.”
Every year Cook has a guiding focus. “‘Change climate, fix our forests’ is my mantra for this year. And I want to acknowledge Andrew St Ledger, cofounder of the Woodland League, for the gift of that expression.” Cook’s hero is John D McNamara, an educator who was an international expert on the pine marten, and who founded the Burren wildlife symposium. “He was the single largest influence in my life. He had the energy and it was all community-based. He knew he was alive. His talks could sustain you through a whole winter. My approach is to remember those who inspire me and keep the consciousness going.”
Adopting the graves of the Leinstermen
On the northwest-facing slope of Tountinna, the highest of the Arra Mountains in Tipperary, lies an “anomalous stone group” that has puzzled locals and visitors for generations. It appears in one of the earliest written histories of Ireland, Lebor Gabála Érenn, or The Book of Invasions, from the 11th century.
Though local lore was plentiful and suggested the stones marked Leinstermen felled by Brian Boru, the Arra Historical and Archaeological Society wanted to know more. Specifically, archaeologically-speaking, what exactly were the graves of the Leinstermen? In 2019, the group received funding from the Heritage Council through the creative Ireland programme to investigate the site, and through a geophysical survey with earth-sound geophysics, they set out to see what was located under the ground, without actually having to dig it up.
As Derek Ryan, chairman of the Arra Historical and Archaeological Society, explains, “We were able to record that there were 46 stones located above the surface and from this the first site plan of the graves of the Leinstermen was created. It revealed a large number of below-ground features. The interpretation and dating of what we have found so far is difficult, but what we can say is that it was a multi-phase site and likely to have been in use for thousands of years.”
The community response has been extremely positive – most people hadn’t seen the monument due to the amount of vegetation around it. To date, the group has run two Heritage Week talks and a Zoom lecture during lockdown, and are still doggedly pursuing answers. “We hope to eventually get to the bottom of our question as to what the monument is exactly and this may be only possible by excavation,” says Ryan, “So we will look into the feasibility of that.”
Taking the pulse of Sligo town
Just as Covid was making its presence known in Ireland, the team behind Sligo Collaborative Town Centre Health Check were putting their final report to press. The health check took one year and is the product of collaboration between a number of organisations, including the Heritage Council, Sligo Business Improvement District (BID), IT Sligo, Sligo Chamber, Sligo County Council and Sligo Tidy Towns. And while it might sound complicated, Finbarr Filan, business owner and chairman of Sligo Tidy Towns, insists it was the opposite. “It was very simple. We sat around the table, identified that there were 15 steps, and asked ‘which steps are you doing?’ People put their hands up, did the steps and we pulled it all together at the end. It’s as good as the strength of your team. We were all well connected already.”
Surveys of individuals and businesses were conducted by a contracted company, while fourth-year architecture students in IT Sligo completed the land-use surveys. “It gives you a picture of our town, a snapshot in time. It covers vacancy rates in our town, consumer sentiment and what people really think of our town. We didn’t fudge the questions so that they’d suit us. We asked the real questions that needed to be asked. The health check shows us our strengths and weaknesses,” Filan says.
Based on the work done through the health check, Sligo’s main street has received €400,000 under the Heritage Council’s historic towns initiative, which was matched by €100,000 from Sligo County Council, and a further €100,000 from business owners of O’Connell Street, to invest in the street’s built heritage. Filan says the ball is in the Government’s court now. “In the programme for Government, there is a commitment from the Government to develop the town centres-first policy. I sit on the advisory group to the Government on that. They need to come out with that policy. I think it’ll be published this year. The health check is step one, really.”
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. 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, puts grazing goats to work tackling the spread of gunnera tinctoria. This rural community’s mammoth task is also documented in the newly-opened old Irish goat visitor centre in Mulranny.
In 2021, €1.6 million 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. “[This year] 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 €1.6 million 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.”