Neart Na Machairí brings together a team of artists, local community partners and community organisers to explore how coastal communities can prepare to adapt to the effects of climate change and biodiversity loss. This project centers on an interdisciplinary approach, combining local place-based knowledge, creative practices, and scientific knowledge to help the wider community reflect on, discuss and co-create ways to respond to predicted challenges.

During these two years, Maharees Conservation Association has created a community-led adaptation planning process to strengthen local decision-making, ensuring the wider community has an opportunity to voice their vision for the future and highlight priority actions, through surveys and public workshops. This multimodal approach to engagement at the local level is key for ensuring a Just Transition as the survey in particular (completed by 82% of the population) gives everyone a voice.

Our artists and project designer have explored and developed a collection of creative approaches and tools to engage with and listen deeply to diverse perspectives within the community. These approaches have ranged from co-creation workshops with the project team, to cyanotype and willow-weaving workshops, to local feasts created entirely from ingredients sourced from within Maharees. Love and pride of place is a key cornerstone of future adaptation. With support from Community Foundation’s Climate Action Work, the artists have developed a local podcast series, combining the perspectives of locals with climate and biodiversity experts, to sit alongside and support the longer-term work of the Maharees Conservation Association.

We will share our findings, process and tools so other coastal communities can explore and learn from our journey.

This project is run in partnership between Maharees Conservation Association CLG and Dingle Hub, and funded by the Creative Ireland Programme under its Creative Climate Action Fund II.

Read:

Find out more about the project at the Creative Coastal Resilience website

Events:

These events have been developed through co-creation workshops, planning meetings and field trips to other communities with the project Steering Group (Deirdre de Ballís, Martha Farrell, Aidan O’Connor, Jeanne Spillane & Patricia Herrero) and Community Partners, representing hundreds of hours of volunteer effort, alongside a reflective learning process led by Dr. Clare Watson and the creative support of our three embedded artists, Emer Fallon, Silke Michels and Zoë Uí Fhaoláin Green and Project Designer Zoë Rush.

• Launch Event, May 2024
• World Sand Dune Day, June 2024
• Preparing for a Changing Climate, July 2024
• Resilient Seas, Resilient Communities, August 2024
• Winter Gathering, December 2024
• The Art of Sustenance, Sisterhood and Solidarity, Siamsa Tire, March 2025
• Feile na Bealtaine, May 2025
• Series of Community Climate Adaptation Workshops led by Maharees Conservation Association, 2025
• World Sand Dune Day, June 2025
• Harvest of Ideas, August 2025
• Project Local Closing Event, September 2025
• Project Exhibition, Tralee Museum, October 2025