As part of our Creating a Climate for Change project, we celebrated the Summer months (with a rare smattering of sunshine) outdoors in Croom Park on our first community exchange day on 30 July 2024.
Over the course of the past eight months we have been building care, growing community and increasing the capacity of individuals to notice, connect, learn and understand what climate action means for them and their place. The artist and research team have been working alongside community groups in Moyross, Croom and at Dance Limerick, using the diversity of participants´stories related to nature and climate from these places to devise scores and workshop methods. We are co-creating a body of work that weaves these distinct places and peoples together.
The exchange day was the first time that participants from two groups met each other and shared their experiences. It was a pivotal moment and definite project highlight for all involved. With soft dragonfly green grass underfoot, we dropped in gently to our usual Tai Chi warm-up but this time with a keener awareness and reverence for the rooted presence of large old oaks growing alongside young rowans and silver birch trees in the park. The movement seemed much slower and softer than when we dance inside, perhaps the trees were inviting us to slow down. Having grown in confidence in movement, connection to the body and our ability to sense and relate within the ecosystems we are part of, participants spent the next hour delighting in their new-found connection to place and ability to care for and connect with each other.
We flowed on to learning about water catchments and discussing the relationship between the river Maigue (in Croom) and the river Shannon, sharing the scores and movement qualities that have been inspired by water in both communities. To finish we explored weight bearing, yielding, and moving with the trees as our anchors. This led to conversations on how co-operation, caring for relationships and community building are the true ways that nature continues to evolve and this is also the basis of mobilising people for climate action and systemic transformation.
One of the main threads that the artist and research team has followed throughout this project is a systems-thinking view of the first whole that we are part of being our bodies. When we have a strong connection to our body, we can sense, respond to and care for the community and place that we are nested within. Then from this ability to care for and relate to, we can choose to take action and create positive change with those around us. This is how we are creating a climate for change. Change that is embodied and feels alive and real. That is the kind of change we are here for.
We invite you to participate in one of our upcoming workshops, or join our next exchange day on October 3rd in Moyross Community Centre, as we move into conversations on how we care for nature, understanding our role and committing in some way, no matter how big or small to taking climate action.
You can check out the upcoming Creating a Climate for Change events on our What’s On section here.
Creating a Climate for Change in Limerick is one of the twenty-four projects selected for the Spark Creative Climate Action Fund II projects for 2023 by the Creative Ireland Programme in collaboration with the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications (DECC).
