P024 → To Be What We Are
‘To Be What We Are’ was part of a larger fieldwork by Cork Midsummer Festival and Springboard Family Services focused on child-centered, process-based collaborative art to engage with the Traveller community in Cork’s north side carried out within the framework of the BePart Beyond Participation European Network research into participation within the arts that ran between 2019 and 2023. As part of this trajectory, the To Be What We Are project led by artist Eszter Némethi spanned 15 months and included 60 workshops with three different groups of Traveller children in the Knocknaheeny and Farenree areas of Cork city aged 3-13.
In Year 1 we had about 40 workshops and staged a small exhbition for families in June 2022 and Eszter also made a book for the young artists based on their stories and documenting the work.
In Year 2 with the supprt from the Arts Council and in collaboration with filmmaker Claire Muprhy we did 20 workshops and through these created a multi-media installation as part of Cork Midsummer Festival. The short film of the same title by Claire which is also part of the installation was premiered at Homo Novus Festival in Riga. A publication about the methodology and case study is currently in development and is edited by Dr. Sophie Hope.
Presented:
To Be What We Are (in-hibition) Holyhill Community Center, June 2022
To Be What We Are (installation) Holyhill Community Center, May 2023
To Be What We Are (installation) St. Peters, Cork Midsummer Festival, June 2023
To Be What We Are (short film) Homo Novus Festival, Riga (LT), September 2023
To Be What We Are (installation) 9th National TUSLA Childprotection and Social Welfare Conference, UCC, October 2023
To Be What We Are (installation) TUSLA Youth Summit, November 2023
To Be What We Are (short film) International Cork Film Festival, November 2023 [Irish Premiere]
To Be What We Are (short film) Youth Film Showcase - International Cork Film Festival, November 2023
To Be What We Are (short film) St.Patrick’s Day Showcase - International Cork Film Festival, March 2024
Featured in:
Beyond Participation? report by Dr.Sophie Hope and Henry Mulhill for BE PART, December 2023
[multi-media installation]
To Be What We Are, the installation is a co-creation, the result of an artistic laboratory guided by creative play. It is also a document of the space for play co-created by 18 Traveller children, two artists, four community and community support workers, parents, siblings and institutions.
The laboratory was guided by the children’s interests and experiments and partially built on the work of the ‘Groups,’ an after-school art club for Traveller children at Cork City Partnership in Knocknaheeny, which has been active for over 15 years. It was led by Deirdre O’Regan and more recently Maeve McCarthy (Springboard Family Services) and Noreen O’Regan (Cork City Partnership). Eszter Némethi, an artist and theatre maker, began working with the ‘Groups’ in March 2022. She was invited by Cork Midsummer Festival and Springboard through BePart, a Creative Europe project that critically explores the politics and practices of participation in the arts. To Be What We Are was developed over the course of 9 weeks of hourlong workshops in Spring 2023 in collaboration with filmmaker Claire Murphy.
We wanted to create a space for playing together, where the children have agency and control over walls, their bodies and time. Where the adults agree to play along. A small space where we create the rules of the game together. Where gestures are as important as words. Where it is possible to wildly explore, to be curious and to be brave.
Every week for an hour, we played and practised the wild process of making something together. We let our play guide us - allowing it to shape its own spaces, aesthetics, languages, rules, stories and problems.
We allowed our play to create a small world.
This world of ours is full of action words:
flying printing transforming
playing pouring
moving marking
framing bickering being
becoming
In our world, everything is happening right now.
To Be What We Are is noisy, hard to catch, and beautiful like a flock of birds called a murmuration.
It exists when you are here with its colourful mix of possibilities, changing shapes, attentions, frustrations and flying materials. It is a special place that is ours, and bursting to get to know you.
This world of play is always on the brink of disappearing, almost ready to be left behind, but always found again.
This is our world to be what we are, and you are welcome.
[exhibition text by Eszter Némethi]
‘Night Sky’ by
ink on board, 2022
To Be What We Are 5’
The film follows imagination as it transforms into a dinosaur and then starts to run. Created in collaboration with Eszter and the ‘Wednesday Group’ during the workshops on a mix of 16mm and digital film and incorporating animation by the children, the short film by Claire Murphy forms part of the To Be What We Are installation but also gets presented alone as a short film on it’s own right.
Artists Annalise, Candy, Cheryl, Bernie, Bridgie, Dolores, Helen Marie, Jennifer,
Jimmy, Jimmy, Kathleen, Mariah, Mikey, Mossie, Rihanna, Ruby, Theresa, William
Lead Artist & workshop facilitation Eszter Némethi
Filmmaker Claire Murphy
Family Support Workers Maeve McCarthy [Year 2] and Deirdre O’Regan [Year 1]
Community Liaison Workers Ann Stokes, Helen O’Reilly
Producer Susan Holland
Production Assistant Dave O’Sullivan
Technicians & Build Paddy Cahill, Dave O’Sullivan, Dominic Fee, Lauren Morrissey
Community Development Noreen O’Regan
Seamstress Sinead Teahan
The residency of Eszter Némethi is one of the fieldworks supported by Cork Midsummer Festival as part of the BePart art beyond participation project. BePart is a Creative Europe project that critically explores the politics and practices of participation in the arts.
The project ‘To Be What We Are’ is funded by the Arts Council through an Arts Participation Project Award and supported by Springboard Family Services, Cork City Partnership and TUSLA.
With special thanks to the Stokes, O’Reilly and O’Donoghue families, Deirdre O’Regan, Melissa Kearsey (Dacent Print), JP Treacy, Eve Olney, Andrea Williams, all staff at Holyhill Community Center, Lorraine, Allyson and all at Cork Midsummer Festival, Dan and all at St.Peters, Veronica Kelly, Linda Curtin, Scott Duggan, Kath Gorman.