Microforest VI - Autumn 2023
In November and December 2023 a new group of students of Blakestown Community School was introduced to the Microforest to learn about the connection between ecology, biodiversity and art. Over the course of four sessions students participated in a series of activities led by artists Gareth Kennedy and Maura Brennan and Kasia Kaminska.
Seanchaí Microforest is a micro forest on the grounds of Blakestown Community School created by Gareth Kennedy and the members of the transition year art class along with their teacher Mary Quinn. The Microforest provides a space where to have a meaningful encounter with nature, learn about environmental sustainability and its impact on climate change. The intent is to give young students an enriching learning experience and emboldened them to take on their own environmentally sensitive projects.
The project is led by artist Gareth Kennedy and in partnership with Fingal County Council Arts Office, Blakestown Community School and The Arts Council Ireland.
In this cycle of the Microforest, artist Gareth Kennedy introduced a new group of students to the Microforest, thought them how to identify trees and their leaves and make drawings of them. Together they also made a natural hot elderberry tonic.
In the second session of the programme, students met up with Maura Brennan to learn about her venture The Acorn Project, a non-profit organisation delivering nature based learning programmes aimed at empowering communities to take action in ecological restoration through reconnection with their local wild spaces through community seed saving, forest school, nature connection and sharing of traditional skills. They learned how oak trees and acorns can become a food source and made utensils using a green woodwork technique.
In the third and fourth session students continued to develop their green woodwork technique to created wooden spoons for the final pot meal in the Microforest. They also learned about Alternative processes - Cyanotype and Anthotype, with Kasia Kaminska. They foraged plants, flowers and soil in the Microforest to create Cyanotype and Anthotype prints and discussed ones they particularly liked and used to create their prints. The day concluded with a communal shared pot meal cooked in the Microforest.
Participating Artists & Researchers:
Gareth Kennedy / Lead Artist
Maura Brennan / Educator & The Acorn Project Founder
Kasia Kaminska / Artist, Photographer & Designer
Gareth Kennedy is a visual artist whose work explores the social agency of the handcrafted in the 21st century and generates 'communities of interest' around the production and performance of experimental material cultures. Informed by an anthropological approach these works draw on the layered histories of a location. His projects are embedded, evolve over time, and enacted by diverse publics and individuals. His practice to date includes public art commissions, workshops, education projects, exhibitions, residencies and collaborations. In 2009, he co-represented Ireland at the 53rd Venice Biennale alongside artist Sarah Browne and their collaborative practice, Kennedy Browne. In 2015 he was long listed for the prestigious VISIBLE Award for Die Unbequeme Wissenschaft (‘The Uncomfortable Science’). He is currently undertaking commissions for the National Children's Hospital and Fingal County Council in Dublin. He teaches Sculpture and Expanded Practice and is lead on the Studio+ FIELD module at NCAD, Dublin which explores experimental and experiential pedagogies in response to a derelict brownfield site beside the college.
Maura Brennan is an Educator, Weaver, Rites of Passage Facilitator, Sacred Plant Medicine Practitioner and Apprentice Herbalist. She is a Forest School Leader and Forest Therapy Guide. She is passionate about sharing traditional skills and using plants for food, medicine and crafts. Maura learned to weave from a family of traditional weavers and herbalists in Peru in 2005/06. This experience reawakened her learning in traditional crafts and uses of plants. She loves to work in collaboration with communities, organisations, schools, artists and individuals. After a visit to an ancient Oak woodland in Scotland in 2017, Maura founded the Acorn Project and has been working with communities and schools along the River Nore towards a shared vision of forest restoration. The Acorn Project is a community seed saving project that creates nature based programmes for learning and wellbeing that connect children and adults to nature and inspire action in ecological restoration.
Kasia Kaminska is a photographer and designer based in Dublin, Ireland. She is a founding member of award-winning photobook design collective Read That Image. She has exhibited frequently in Ireland since 2010; group shows include TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway, and Re/Turn at Studio 8, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin. Her photobooks have also been selected and shown at the Dublin Art Book Fair in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin and the Limerick International Publishers Salon, Ormston House, Limerick. She is a graduate of the Dublin Institute of Technology where she received a BA in Photography in 2013.
Thank you to Mary Quinn, teacher at Blakestown Community School and our partners and supporters for the project, Fingal County Council Arts Office, Blakestown Community School and The Arts Council Ireland. Video by Arcade Film.
