How this Research Came about

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This research was initially informed through ongoing praxis of my lived experiences of being an artist-craft maker, grassroots activist, adult learner and educator. This included experiences of economic marginalisation as a working-class woman (AFAB), a disabled person, and craftworker, along with my concerns about the world and my practice discontents as an activist. The research was later informed by academic scholarship. I mention this praxis developmental route to highlight that this PAR is grounded in a social movement foundation.

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As a craft maker I had spent many years in self-employment making locally produced sustainable clothing to support myself and the idea of sustainable trans-local economies. Creative local economies are promoted by UNESCO as part of the sustainable development agenda (United Nations, 2013; Harvey, 2016). Locally produced goods can develop local culture, community, meaningful work and a connection to local resources and knowledge. However, the impacts from increased competition from globalised economies, the 2008 global recession and the entry of the IMF to Ireland meant that I could no longer support myself through craftwork (Harvey, 2019). The obstacles for craft workers to survive within these economies of scale were apparent. These challenges highlighted the contradiction of UNESCO’s position on local cultural economies and economic growth (United Nations, 2013; Harvey, 2016), as well as state promotion of small business and self-employment. It especially highlighted the problematic hegemonic narrative and meritocratic myth of capitalist neoliberal culture which tells us we can all thrive if we just work hard enough (Goldthorpe and Jackson, 2008; McNamee and Miller, 2009). This can be viewed as a hegemonic story crisis, a crisis which occurs when the story being promoted by power interests in society reveals itself as a social myth (Cox, 2024). This similarly applies to education, for example, the hegemonic story told is that if you get a good education, you will be able to get a good job and buy a home (Goldthorpe and Jackson, 2008). The housing crisis in Ireland, and elsewhere, disrupts this hegemonic story line (Greaney and Harrahill, 2023; Lima, Hearne and Murphy, 2023).

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I subsequently became more involved in environmental justice grassroots activism in the Shell to Sea campaign and Rossport Solidarity camp, Ireland. This campaign objected to the development of a gas refinery in Erris, Co. Mayo, Ireland for safety, environmental and economic reasons (Shell to Sea, 2005; Our story: the Rossport 5, 2006; Siggins, 2010). Many effective approaches to collective action were used in this campaign but organising actions tended to rely on verbal meetings, which can be challenging for less verbal people. I experienced more capacity to contribute to the campaign through creative activities for the campaign or building work within the camp. I later reflected on and processed some of those experiences through an art-craft activist practice which enabled me to develop a body of work entitled ‘The Beating of the Heart’. This was an opportunity to raise awareness of the community’s experiences of dealing with Shell, IRMS and State violence, through a Lace making practice linked to the region’s heritage (Shell to Sea, 2005; Our story: the Rossport 5, 2006; Siggins, 2010).

This led to an interest in combining art-craft and tinkering, or just ‘making practices’, with radical pedagogy to create more approaches to how people can participate in social justice movements.

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I was interested in developing embodied experiential learning approaches to explore justice issues, human needs, visions of alternative society, and how to bring about structural change through collective action. This interest took me on an expansive journey through Adult Education and the complex and subtle ways that power can be exercised in society to maintain the status quo, especially through pedagogy. I also came to understand how the layered processes of radical Adult Education can develop our agency to affect structural change through collective action. Attempting to develop this creative embodied environmental education practice within the landscape of the Irish Further Education (FE) sector, I identified many neoliberal policy challenges impacting the transformative social change tradition of Adult Education. These included aggressive austerity funding cuts and sustainability greenwashing while multi-sector and public calls for climate action education simultaneously increased. The ways these issues inform this research are outlined next.