Dinnseanchas - Envisioning the Uplands
In modern Irish, dinnseanchas means "topography"; the arrangement of features in a landscape. However, the word has an older meaning that describes the lore of a place. It is associated with accounts of the place names, traditions, events and characters of particular areas.
Hometree’s Dinnseanchas Project incorporates both of these aspects while taking a forward-looking approach in exploring the communities, landscapes, habitats, and economies of Ireland’s Atlantic uplands. Lead by a team of artists, ecologists, and communicators, Dinnseanchas aims to support upland communities in understanding the radical role they could play in mitigating the impacts of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and socio-economic issues such as depopulation.
Dinnseanchas, which is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action – Agents of Change funding, will support a group of artists to do immersive residencies in various communities along Ireland’s western seaboard. During these residencies the artists will listen to communities, facilitate conversations and workshops, engage with the difficult themes of biodiversity loss, agricultural policy and practice, and support an envisioning process that elevates the voices of the community themselves. Their creative responses will trace contours of the past, and chart new paths into the future. The artists will be mentored and guided by experienced voices from the worlds of farming, ecology, language, socially engaged artistic practice, and culture.
Dinnseanchas is a sister project to Hometree’s Wild Atlantic Rainforest Project, which is a large-scale landscape restoration project created in response to Ireland’s climate crisis, the neglected uplands and their vanishing oceanic rainforests. Dinnseanchas will provide an arts, heritage and community aspect to the Rainforest project’s ecological work. We hope that it will give a voice to the communities of Ireland’s uplands and to the land itself that will help to inform the work of Hometree and wider policies and conversations as we all face into a future that is demanding us to make collective changes.
Read more about Ireland’s uplands and woodlands
Dinnseanchas is a recipient of the Creative Climate Action fund, an initiative from the Creative Ireland Programme. It is funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media in collaboration with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. The fund supports creative, cultural and artistic projects that build awareness around climate change and empower citizens to make meaningful behavioural transformations. For more on Creative Climate Actions, see here.
