Well as the bank holiday draws to a close and I am packing my tools and getting ready to start another creative workshop at St Marys's secondary school in Edenderry in Offaly tomorrow.
 
No doubt we will be discussing the report released today by the UN's Global Assessment which has highlighted the distressing impact that humanity is having on the natural world - species are being lost at the fastest ever rate, mainly driven by the changing use of land.
 
As a society we are overwhelmed by media stories with their sad images of death and choked oceans and it’s easy to feel as if individual and local actions won’t matter. It’s sometimes hard to have these discussions with young people without upsetting them but I aim to offer hope through creativity and discussion. Without doubt rapid action is needed at a political level to avoid an ecological disaster however I firmly believe individual actions can still matter.
 
REDUCE, RE-USE and REFUSE TO USE Single Use Plastic.

Oops just realized that I never actually posted about this wonderful exposure for our recent snake project . Really relevant when we consider that Ireland is the top producer of plastic waste in Europe; generating an average of 61kgs per person every year - almost double what the UK produces. - We produce the equivalent of nearly 2,000 water bottles per person per year- these young people were particularly shocked and really want to do something about it!  Great to be in a position to give them a voice and to have it heard!
Please check out the link below.
http://www.rte.ie/news/player/2019/0403/21534488-students-say-no-to-use-of-plastic-in-school-lunches/

Half term........ loved it so nice to switch off the engine and just kick back in the garden .... but seeing as I am already sitting at a computer again preparing to  start a new project next week here's a few pics from most recent creative residency at St Fintan's High School Sutton  where I met a wonderful art teacher called Ruth Barry who was hosting a school arts week. I was invited to create some new single use plastic headdresses with the TY students and we even made it out for some fresh air and a short beach clean up too.

Thanks to everyone who came to St. Patricks cathedral last evening and despite the heavy rain we has a great evening! In addition to  helping to create the  "Single Use Plastic Snake" project, the young people at  CMS Learning centre in D8 created a series of posters to advertise last nights performance at St Patrick's cathedral. These bright and colourful posters show headdresses made in workshops, over the past month by the teenagers involved,  and offer bold visual alternatives to using so much plastic. They were all too shy, apart from one, to feature on the posters so teachers and myself took the glory. The posters will adorn the streets of Dublin for next 2 weeks, and will we hope, further drive home the message REDUCE, RE-USE AND REFUSE TO USE!
Listen to the kids folks- their words not mine!

Well another long day yesterday ...packed the van with 30ft snake in kit form  and left home just before 6am to reach Dublin in time for an early visit from RTE news team at Francis St CBS.  Kids were sooooo excited to showcase their work and spoke really well.. I got a few words in too so all good. Then a long afternoon spent in St Patrick's Cathedral majestic space assembling the single use plastic monster that we have been working on for the past 3 months. And it worked!!!! Thanks to the the children of D8 for their enthusiasm, Marc Rome (patience and amazing building skills), Kelley Bermingham and team at St Patricks's, Eoghan Desmond  (plastic song composer ) and Eddie McGuinness ( talented choreographer) . Performance is tonight at 6.45 in the cathedral FREE tickets must  be downloaded  from their site in advance .... If yews in Dublin please do drop in and  hear the voice of Dublin's youth screaming NO to having their (government provided) school luches food wrapped in single use plastic.

Well the final countdown.... last week of building scales with these talented young creative wonderful minds..
I also was invited to St. Canices BNS in Finglas.. where Miss Bolger's 1st class boys had saved 350 bottles in their class room from their government supplied school lunches. A great lesson on her part to show the boys how quickly it all piles up and doesn't just magically disappear!
Back in in D8 with Miss Whyte's class at Francis St CBS we also got  to try to the carcass of the snake for size and I showed the children development pictures of the snakes head which is currently being sprayed by Marc in our polly-tunnel at home in Laois.
Kelly Bermingham from St Patrick's cathedral also came in to visit and we had a rehearsal of the song " Plastic" created by Eoghan Desmond. This song  will be  performed by the local schools ( St Brigid's, St. Enda's, Francis St CBS, Warrenmount and the D8 scouts) who have also participated , alongside with presentation of the snake in in the Cathedral next Thursday night at 6pm! FREE tickets shave to pre-booked on line just click here folks https://stpatrickscathedral.digitickets.co.uk/event-tickets/21373?branches.branchID=1045&_ga=2.14025591.1782793719.1554043697-1996397658.1554043697
PLEASE DO COME ALONG FOR WHAT PROMISES TO BE A GREAT EVENING!

Well another great week working with the young people of Dublin 8- CMS Learning centre, St Francis CBS and the YMCA after school group. While the snake's head has to be structurally built at home - due to its size ( I hope it will fit out the studio door), it was full steam ahead with sorting plastics and building scales in Dublin. Then later in the day we had some great drawings and quotes from the after school group. I feel very privileged to be working with such wonderful enthusiastic young people and also great to hear that thousands of school pupils worldwide have abandoned classrooms for another day of protest against climate change.

ONE day of school lunch wrappings from ONE school ...along with ONE weeks crisp packets collected outside school  all go to make the scales of the first 10 ft of our Snake!

With 500 packs of Tayto are sold every minute this amounts to two hundred sixty-two million eight hundred thousand crisp packets every year. The composite material conventionally used to keep crisps fresh is not biodegradable and cannot be recycled so that's an awful lot of landfill and poison for the environment. Given the current single use plastic crisis we are asking Largo foods to address this issue IMMEDIATELY and come up with a solution to change the materials for their packets to one which is recyclable or even more preferably a non-plastic environmentally friendly material. www.peopleagainstplastic.ie
http://chng.it/dFkGYmk2yZ​

Well we finally are under way ... The young people of Dublin 8 ( CMS Learning Centre, St. Francis CBS, Warrenmount and St Bridget's primary schools) are all coming together and reshaping all their school lunch single use plastic to create scales of a giant 30ft snake.... wonderful young talent  and lively debate (with some impromptu dancing) all day.....but the scary part is how much plastic was waiting fo me when I arrived. Each lunch consists of..

• Chopped fruit in a sealed plastic bag
• Sandwich in a sealed plastic bag, with a "fresh daily" tag
• Water bottle 
• Milk carton with Plastic straw in a plastic bag
• Pasta pot/Granola with plastic fork/spoon

and this is EVERY day.... so as you can imagine these young people find it difficult to understand that single use plastic is something to be concerned about - it's their everyday reality!

Great to see the minister for culture Josepha Madigan and Katherine Zappone sporting some of the plastic headdress creations made in recent PEOPLE AGAINST PLASTIC workshops. Speaking last week at the National Gallery of Ireland Ministers Madigan, McHugh and Zappone announced a combined 2019 budget of €6m for Creative Youth, an initiative of the all-of-Government Creative Ireland Programme, which aims to enable the creativity of children and young people.

Great to see the minister for culture Josepha Madigan and Katherine Zappone sporting some of the plastic headdress creations made in recent PEOPLE AGAINST PLASTIC workshops. Speaking last week at the National Gallery of Ireland Ministers Madigan, McHugh and Zappone announced a combined 2019 budget of €6m for Creative Youth, an initiative of the all-of-Government Creative Ireland Programme, which aims to enable the creativity of children and young people.

Delighted to be working with the wonderful young people from of Dublin 8 - St Francis CBS, The Iveagh trust and the  YMCA in conjunction with  St Patrick's Cathedral
on a new arts project highlighting the sheer lunacy of our usage of Single Use Plastic.

Each of the 4 items in the daily lunches provided to the students comes individually wrapped in plastic (health and safety requirements)  and together we are collecting it (and their crisp packets) over a 4 week period to create a 30 ft Plastic snake!
How can we possibly hope to teach young people to use less plastic if we are giving them no alternatives?
WATCH THIS SPACE!

 Delighted to be working with the wonderful young people from of Dublin 8 - St Francis CBS, The Iveagh trust and the  YMCA in conjunction with  St Patrick's Cathedral
on a new arts project highlighting the sheer lunacy of our usage of Single Use Plastic.

Each of the 4 items in the daily lunches provided to the students comes individually wrapped in plastic (health and safety requirments)  and together we are collecting it (and their crisp packets) over a 4 week period to create a 30 ft Plastic snake!
How can we possibly hope to teach young people to use less plastic if we are giving them no alternatives?
WATCH THIS SPACE!

Well can't believe its been a week since  bringing our Single Use Plastic Photobooth to Ballymaloe!
Not only did we get to play with the general public but our single use plastic headdresses were one of the highlights of the sustainable fashion show and  I was invited to speak about them while the models strutted their stuff!
​A thoroughly enjoyable weekend and thanks to Helene Wallhoran, Rory Allen and all at Ballymaloe for inviting us and also for highlighting sustainability at their Christmas fair!

Well after a busy weekend with our Photobooth at Ballymaloe Sustainable Living Festival (pics yet to come).... it was great to to be invited to Cork Life Centre as their visiting artist for "One World Week" - especially as this year's theme is Activism and the Sustainable Development Goals. I worked with a great bunch of teenagers and together we crafted some amazing new headdresses whilst discussing our plastic usage and ways to reduce it. We opened up Nescafe Gusto capsules and found 4 more layers of plastic inside each capsule that we weren't aware of - scary stuff indeed!! Wonderful energy with these teens and a great learning experience all round. Big thanks to Helen O' Keeffe (art teacher) and all the staff at Cork Life Centre for their support.

We have been invited by Ballymaloe Sustainable Living Festival to bring our 'People Against Plastic' campaign as part of their Christmas Craft Fair.
If you are in the neighbourhood, do drop in and say hello and have your portrait taken..