HEdge Space is a holistic radical adult and community education research project.

 

Radical adult education supports communities to identify issues of injustice they experience, identify oppressive power at the root of injustice, and discover their own power to act together to bring about political systems change. 

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The research project, originating in The Burren, Co. Clare, Ireland, was open to anyone with an interest in working to bring about just change using collaborative, critical and creative eco-embodied workshops. 14 public co-researchers were involved in the research, with another 40 people participating in various public workshop events. This website serves an open-source public community learning resource. It shares the 'really useful knowledge and tools' that was co-produced with co-researchers on our collective learning-for-action journey through our experiential experience of doing holistic praxis workshops. Mile Buiochas to all involved. See 'our community' to learn more about the co-researching community.

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The workshops use a holistic edge-fusion of local small-scale making workshop practices based on; community, feminist and popular education; the arts and crafts movement, community arts, arts & ecology, interventionist art; permaculture, STEAM education and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). They aim to offer an inclusive, holistic, creative and dynamic approach to bottom-up community organizing in a participatory democracy to bring about cultural, political and economic systems that support life to flourish. These workshops are about supporting people and communities to find their agency and claim power, and keep creativity, hope, and the belief that change is possible at their core.

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The website contains a range of these holistic praxis workshop resources and links to ally groups. As well as sharing workshops and tools, the website shares the research story, and gives a snapshot of what activism work is being undertaken by people involved in the research. You can follow the whole research praxis story, or dip into pages. It also gives a picture of what social-environmental justice work is happening in North Clare, and some ways these groups and their activities act in solidarity and link in with broader social movement networks in Ireland and Transnationally. 

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These workshops were developed to support greater participation in a participatory democracy. They can be used by individuals, groups, practitioners, researchers and a range of other stakeholders involved in social-environmental justice movement organizing, such as, within grassroots organizations, community and sustainable development, civil society groups, NGO's, Public Participation Networks, local authorities, social groups, in non-formal and formal education and social practice art contexts.

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This Art-Based Participatory Action Research Project (AB-PAR) PhD was initiated by Giselle Harvey, an activist-researcher. It was hosted by The Limerick School of Art & Design, TUS, & Funded by The Irish Research Council through the GOIPG Scholarship. Irish Research Council  The PhD ran from 2020 to 2024, but PAR never ends.