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Workshops

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Card and Chat Workshops @ Rekindle Festival
What do we make and why?

Image Credit: Anthony O'Connor and Rekindle

Facilitator: Giselle Harvey

Date: May 2023

Location: Ennistymon, Co. Clare

Workshop Description:
Street Intervention workshop and participatory reflection trail. Drop-in Participation.
A mix of  art, craft and critical questions using wool carders, and swing tags and a rope line.

Participants: Open to passing public, Fluid participation

Duration: 4 hours

Purpose:

Public engagement on issues of production and consumption issues in society, (SDG 12), using the problem posing questions:

What we make and why? What are the impacts to community and nature? What could you make together for social-environmental change? and how we can make flourishing communities.?

Pop-up Workshop Set-up and Structure:

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Set-Up:
The following tools, materials and questions are available on the street for people to engage with:
Wool and wool carders, swing tags, pens, and an activity instruction board are on a table.
The praxis problem posing questions were placed along the windowsills of the building.
A rope line is hung along a wall for people to hang their responses on and add to the reflection trail. As the reflection trail grows others can engage in the reflections and may add to it.
 

Structure:

  1. Explain the activity as people come along and invite them to participate,

  2. Give a basic demonstration of wool carding, then invite them to respond to the questions and then hang their answers on the line

  3. Gauge their interest in further praxis workshops and collect and store contact details (securely), or direct to website.

  4. Close
     

This was a four hour drop-by workshop but could be expanded into a longer workshop or programme of workshops. 

In this workshop the problem posing questions about making were explored with the public using a pop-up street workshop in association with the *Rekindle Festival and Common Knowledge.

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The purpose of this workshop was threefold, firstly, to engage the general public on the street and generate critical thinking on the issues of production and consumption issues and sustainability.  Secondly, it was to complete praxis on this problem posing workshop design. Thirdly, the workshop created a participatory trail along the street which lead to the main rekindle event space at the Ennistymon Courthouse Gallery.

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*The Rekindle festival has an intergeneration skills development ethos and seeks to engage with older people in the community to learn lost skills, It is thought of as old skills being connected to younger hands in contemporary times. Common Knowledge is a non-profit social enterprise based deep in the Burren, Co. Clare.

They share skills in building, making, mending and growing, because 'we believe that between us all, we have the knowledge needed to create a truly sustainable future'. The Common Knowledge Centre (ourcommonknowledge.org)

People came and carded wool and made a little basket of Rolags which could be spun later.

Image Credit: Anthony O'Connor and Rekindle

Engaging with the Critical problem posing questions

Image Credit: Anthony O'Connor and Rekindle

The Participatory Reflection Trail

Participant Responses to the critical problem posing questions on making

Q.1: What we make and why?

Q.2: What are the impacts to community and nature? 

What are the impacts to community and nature? 

 Q.3: What could you make together for social-environmental change? 

Q.4: How we can make flourishing communities?

Key Generative Themes From the Sessions

What we make and why? What are the impacts to community and nature?

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  • Making is purposeful, useful, playful, meaningful, our vocation, creates beautiful and necessary things

  • To learn a process,

  • Connection to community, 

  • Making together makes community, sharing what we make with others builds community.

  • Making connects us intergenerational, to the memory of those who have died.
     

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What could you make together for social-environmental change? and how we can make flourishing communities.?

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  • Love and kindness

  • Reuse, repair, buy less., make more of our own food and tools

Key Really Useful Questions From the Sessions

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No questions were raised in the responses in this workshop

Working with the SDG's:

The workshop can be structured to weave in some of the SDG's, as a cluster, to explore alternative production and economic structures to bring about social and environmental just change

Below is one possible Cluster: Starting with SDG 12 & 13 to explore other SDG's 

Resources

REKINDLE Festival of Lost Skills — The Common Knowledge Centre (ourcommonknowledge.org)

Link

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