All Hail the Irish Willow: Living Lab Community Co-creation Workshop at the Hunt

As we have reported in our RECHARGE Diary, during the co-creation workshop on the 10th February at The Hunt three ideas were discussed. The one that has become the most feasible for the Living Lab is related to the use of green spaces in Limerick City and County, including the Hunt Museum Garden, to create sustainable sculptures made from native Irish Willow, which will enhance local biodiversity and serve as pollinators. This is how the project Weaving Willow; Get Your Weave On! was born. With a very exciting collaboration with Cook Medical this project is now underway.

As of St. Patrick’s day there are now four willow sculptures growing in the patch of garden in front of the Hunt Museum. Cook Medical, whose work on biodiversity is very important, have planted a woven willow stent sculpture on their land in Castletroy, and have identified other places to plant more willow. The next steps for this Living Lab is to have the last of the co-creation workshops with local communities to identify what it is that they would like to see created from the willow, and how we will achieve this together. As well as living sculptures some other items of interest to the potential identified communities that could be made by weaving willow include beehives, fences, eel traps and coracles.

The communities represented on the 5th of April were: St. Gabriel’s school, St. Mary’s National School, King’s Island Community, Local transition year students. Cook Medical had three representatives there including members of their ‘green team’ who are responsible for the planting and growing on Cook Medical land.

The aim of the workshop was to come away with a list of willow objects the community wanted to make, as well as a plan for next steps going forward. After a walk through the ‘Museum in a Garden’, Jill Cousins, Director of the Hunt Museum, lead the group to the Willow Sculptures planted in the garden. These sculptures are inspired by four objects in the collection; a bowl, a jug, a brooch and a bell. Here participants were given a brief description of RECHARGE. Then the work begun: the group was divided in three smaller tables, and one artists working with Willow sat at each. The three artists - Caoimhe Dunne, Angela Nolan, Veronica Santorum - described their work, the community asked questions and together came up with ideas of what they would like to make; the whole community then voted on the list of objects that they would like to prioritize making

The list of objects that emerged from the co-creation sessions were: parade wings, lanterns, Puca/Muc Dubh (two figures of Irish folklore representing respectively a monster/spirit and a black pig), a Horse Sculpture, a children’s play dome/seating dome, wreaths/circles, a Coracle (a kind of boat), Rattle, Baskets, Fishing heritage objects (like for instance Eel traps).

The community representatives will now take the ideas from the workshop back to their communities, and together with the artists a number of willow workshops will be organised to put all the ideas into action!