Category Archives: Cork City Events

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 25 September 2014

761a. Recent sunny days in Fitzgerald's Park

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent

Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project 2014-15

25 September 2014

 

Founded in the school year 2002/ 2003, the year 2014-15 coincides with the 12th year of the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project. Now launched for the new school term, The Project is open to schools in Cork; at primary level to the pupils of fourth, fifth and sixth class and at post-primary from first to sixth years. There are two sub categories within the post primary section, Junior Certificate and Leaving Certificate. A student may enter as an individual or as part of a group or a part of a class entry.

 

One of the key aims of the project is to allow students to explore, investigate and debate their local heritage (built, archaeological, cultural and natural) in a constructive, active and fun way. Projects on any aspect of Cork’s rich heritage can be submitted to an adjudication panel. Prizes are awarded for best projects and certificates are given to each participant. A cross-section of projects submitted from the last school season can be gleamed from www.corkheritage.ie plus there are other resources and entry information as well on this website.

 

 Students produce a project on their local area using primary and secondary sources. Each participating student within their class receives a visit and workshop from myself, the co-ordinator in October 2014. The workshop comprises a guide to how to put a project together. Project material must be gathered in an A4/ A3 size project book. The project may be as large as the student wishes but minimum 20 pages (text + pictures + sketches).  Projects must also meet five elements. Projects must be colourful, creative, have personal opinion, imagination and gain publicity before submission. These elements form the basis of a student friendly narrative analysis approach where the student explores their project topic in an interactive and task oriented way. In particular students are encouraged to attain primary material generating primary material through engaging with fieldwork, interviews with local people, making models, photographing, cartoon creating, making DVDs of their area. Re-enacting is also a feature of several projects.

 

 Since 2003, the project has evolved in how students actually pursue local history. The project attempts to provide the student with a hands-on and interactive activity that is all about learning not only about heritage in your local area (in all its forms) but also about the process of learning by participating students. The project is about thinking about, understanding, appreciating and making relevant in today’s society the role of our heritage- our landmarks, our oral histories, our scenery in our modern world for upcoming citizens. So the project is about splicing together activity on issues of local history and heritage such as thinking, exploring, observing, discovering, researching, uncovering, revealing, interpreting and resolving.

 

The importance of doing a project in local history is also reflected in the educational aims of the history curricula of primary and post-primary schools. Local heritage is a mould, which helps the student to become familiar with their local environment and to learn the value of it in their lives. Learning to appreciate the elements of a locality, can also give students a sense of place in their locality or a sense of identity. Hence the Project can also become a youth forum for students to do research and offer their opinions on important decisions being made on their heritage in their locality and how they affect the lives of people locally. Over the years, I know a number of students that have been involved in the project in schools over the years who have took their interest further and have gone on to become professional tour guides, and into other related college work.

 

The project is open to many directions of delivery. Students are pressed to engage with their topic -in order to make sense of it, understand and work with it. Students continue to experiment with the overall design and plan of their work. For example in general, students who have entered before might engage with the attaining of primary information through oral histories. The methodologies that the students create provide interesting ways to approach the study of local heritage. Students are asked to choose one of two extra methods (apart from a booklet) to represent their work. The first option is making a model whilst the second option is making a DVD. It is great to see students using modern up todate technology to present their findings. This works in broadening their view of approaching their project.

 

This project is kindly funded by Cork Civic Trust (viz the help of John X. Miller), Cork City Council (viz the help of Niamh Twomey), and the Heritage Council. Prizes are also provided by the Lifetime Lab, Lee Road and Sean Kelly of Lucky Meadows Equestrian Centre, Watergrasshill (www.seankellyhorse.com). Overall, the Schools’ Heritage Project for the last twelve years has attempted to build a new concerned generation of Cork people, pushing them forward, growing their self-development empowering them to connect to their world and their local heritage. Spread the word please. See my website, www.corkheritage.ie for more details and application forms.

 

 

Caption:

761a. Recent sunny days in Fitzgerald’s Park (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project, 2014/15

 

Cllr Kieran McCarthy is encouraging students in the Cork area to enter the Discover Cork: Schools’ Heritage Project, which has been launched for the 2014/ 15 school season. The Project, which is celebrating its twelfth year allows students to explore, investigate and debate their local heritage in a constructive, active and fun way. Interested students can pick any topic on Cork’s heritage to research and can participate as individuals, groups or as a class.  Students produce a project using primary material such as fieldwork, interviews, making models, DVDs of their area. 

Co-ordinator and founder of the project, Cllr Kieran McCarthy noted that “The project is about thinking about, understanding, appreciating and making relevant in today’s society the role of our heritage- our landmarks, our oral histories, our scenery in our modern world for upcoming citizens. So the project is about splicing together activity on issues of local history and heritage such as thinking, exploring, observing, thinking, discovering, researching, uncovering, revealing, interpreting and resolving. The Schools’ Heritage Project also focuses on motivating and inspiring young people, giving them an opportunity to develop leadership and self development skills, which are very important in the world we live in today.”

 

The City Edition of the Project is funded by Cork Civic Trust, Cork City Council, The Heritage Council, Evening Echo, Lifetime Lab, Sean Kelly of Lucky Meadows Equestrian Centre, Watergrasshill and Cllr Kieran McCarthy. Application forms to enter the project can be viewed on Cllr McCarthy’s heritage website, www.corkheritage.ie.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town, 18 September 2014

760a. Summer rays, Fitzgerald's Park

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 18 September 2014

“Notes on a Park”

 

 

Finding myself sitting in Fitzgerald’s Park, creating a walking tour for culture night is engaging (Friday, 19 September, 5pm, at park stage, free). I observe my fellow but unknown companions, a woman reading a book while her young child plays with an imagined friend in the area by the Michael Collins statue, a man doing yoga by the river. In the distance two men sit on a bench by the pond chatting about aspects of life and children use the trees and bushes to create an imagined play world. Passing the Cork Museum there is the avid tourist with a map in her hand, entering to explore the wonders of Cork’s past.

 

On reflection the tourist’s map does not show the imaginary landscapes created in the mind of the people in the park. Indeed, the tourist’s map does not tell the real truth about the place. The reality is completely different. I recall reading once that maps are supposed to be an accepted part of everyday life and are a graphic representation of space. Maps have symbols – line spacings representing the lie of the land, perhaps the everydayness of a place – topography, water, road lengths, junctions, spot heights. In reality, those spacings are much different. Looking at a map of Fitzgerald’s Park, you never get that sense of sacredness, tranquillity, people coming and going, change and continuity, the whispered conversations to the outburst of laughter – a living place created by the human experience.

 

On my visit, I walk on, acknowledge and chat to a colleague about his research and travels in New Zealand. The pond with its Fr. Mathew Memorial fountain is imposing as the ducks hypnotically paddle around in a circle. My mind conjures up a memory, the trips with my parents, sister and brother to Fitzgerald’s Park, a haven of rest for many Corkonians and a familiar place of my childhood. Indeed, now growing older, thinking about jumping on the Shaky Bridge, feeding the birds in the pond and falling in, playing on the swings and slides and watching the world go by could be metaphors for time turning, a type of enjoying the moment but growing up and moving on. I have no doubt that I’m not the only Corkonian who has taken time out to appreciate the sacred composure of Fitzgerald’s Park and to use it to solve some of life’s problems.

 

With engaging with the historical development of the city, part of the process involves dealing with the familiar places like Fitzgerald’s Park that people know but also unravelling the narrative of the forgotten. Cork has many forgotten places that exist adjacent to well known cityscapes. Exploring these angles, I find that the notion of Cork as a city has always been reinvented. Exploring the architecture of Fitzgerald’s Park, there are elements that Cork has always been a cosmopolitan city within Western European culture, always staying in touch with aspects of modernisation, its history in a sense creating a worthy former European Capital of Culture. Looking at the physical landscape of the Park, there are clues to a forgotten and not so familiar past. The entrance pillars on the Mardyke, the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, the museum, the fountain in the middle of the central pond dedicated to Fr Mathew and timber posts eroding in the river were once part of one of Cork’s greatest historical events, the Cork International Exhibitions of 1902 and 1903. Just like the magical spell of Fitzgerald’s Park, the Mardyke exhibitions were spaces of power. Revered, imagined and real spaces were created. They were marketing strategies where the past, present and future merged, Aesthetics of architecture, colour, decoration and lighting were all added to the sense of spectacle and in a tone of moral and educational improvement. The entire event was the mastermind of Cork Lord Mayor Edward Fitzgerald, after which the park got it name.

 

The wandering of my mind is broken by the crying of a child passing pining for an ice cream. It’s time to ramble on again. Passing by the famous swings and slides, they look so small to me now, as the parents and guardians nearby sit on the benches. Some stare into mid space, others chat and laughing, others shout and perhaps others remember their youthful spell within the Park. High above, the imposing Shaky Bridge stands as a testament of strength as a mother leaves her screaming children loose to jump on this great Cork institution. The River Lee, like the park’s pond, is hypnotic as it flows steadily towards the city centre past the familiar, forgotten, real and imagined spaces of one of Cork’s greatest landmarks Fitzgerald’s Park.

 

Other tour: I will also conduct a tour of the city side of the old line on Saturday evening, 20 September starting at 6.30pm (free) at the entrance on The Marina side adjacent the Main Drainage station of the Amenity Walk (as part of Cork Harbour Open Day). The Cork Blackrock and Passage Railway, which opened in 1850, was among the first of the Irish suburban railway projects.  Sir John Benjamin MacNeill, the engineer of the Cork Blackrock and Passage Railway, was appointed engineer-in-chief of many projects in Ireland including plans for 800 miles of railway.

 

Caption:

760a. Summer rays, Fitzgerald’s Park (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Kieran’s Historical Tours of Fitzgerald’s Park and Old Line

 

As part of Cork’s Culture Night on Friday 19 September, Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a walking tour of Fitzgerald’s Park and its environs (new tour, 5pm, free, meet at Park stage, approx 1 hour). The park’s entrance pillars on the Mardyke, the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion, the museum, the fountain in the middle of the central pond dedicated to Fr Mathew and timber posts eroding in the river were once part of one of Cork’s greatest historical events, the Cork International Exhibitions of 1902 and 1903. Just like the magical spell of Fitzgerald’s Park, the exhibitions were spaces of power. Revered, imagined and real spaces were created. They were marketing strategies where the past, present and future merged, Aesthetics of architecture, colour, decoration and lighting were all added to the sense of spectacle and in a tone of moral and educational improvement. The entire event was the mastermind of Cork Lord Mayor Edward Fitzgerald, after whom the park got its name.

 

Interested in finding out more on the Old Cork-Blackrock and Passage Railway Line and its connection to Cork Harbour? Cllr Kieran McCarthy will conduct a tour of the city side of the old line on Saturday evening, 20 September starting at 6.30pm at the entrance on The Marina side adjacent the Main Drainage station of the Amenity Walk. The tour is free (approx 1 1/2 hours, as part of Cork Harbour Open Day) and is open to all. South east Cork City is full of historical gems; the walk not only talks about the history of the line but also the history of the villages and harbour that surround the old line itself.

 

The Cork Blackrock and Passage Railway, which opened in 1850, was among the first of the Irish suburban railway projects. The original terminus, designed by Sir John Benson was based on Victoria Road but moved in 1873 to Hibernian Road. The entire length of track between Cork and Passage was in place by April 1850 and within two months, the line was opened for passenger traffic. In May 1847, low embankments, which were constructed to carry the railway over Monarea Marshes (Albert Road-Marina area), was finished. In Blackrock, large amounts of material were removed and cut at Dundanion to create part of the track there. Due to the fact that the construction was taking place during the Great Famine, there was no shortage of labour. A total of 450 men were taken on for the erection of the embankments at the Cork end of the line. Another eighty were employed in digging the cutting beyond Blackrock. These and other stories feature on Kieran’s tour.

Kieran’s Heritage Week, 2014

          Cork Heritage Open Day, 23 August, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

          Kieran’s tours for heritage week:

·         Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Tuesday 26 August 2014 – Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

Cork Heritage Open Day, Saturday, 23 August 2014

Cork Heritage Open Daywebsite, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

Cork Heritage Open Day is organized by Cork City Council as part of Heritage Week in association with The Heritage Council and media sponsors Cork’s  96FM and the Evening Echo. 

This event would not be successful without the participation of the building owners and proprietors.  The organisers would like to thank each of the participating building proprietors for their generosity and fantastic support.

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, Heritage Week, 21 August 2014

756a. Painting a future, Members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 21 August 2014

Heritage Week, 23-31 August – Carved from a Swamp

 

Cork Heritage Open Day and Heritage Week are looming – a kind of Christmas week – for a heritage fanatic like me. It is great to see the city’s local history and natural heritage being focussed on. Indeed as a city, we need to celebrate it more publicly and more regularly. This city’s growth on a swamp is in itself a story on which a whole series of talks and walks can be based. I am always in awe at the geologists’ reports on beneath this urban space – that below the swamp are multiple tree stumps of a broken down forest flooded out through sea level rise from over 20,000 years ago. The city’s buildings continue to sink into this space -20,000 years in the making – with each generation struggling to carve its own ‘safe harbour’. 

This city is built on a shift-shaping landscape – sand and gravel, rushes and reeds – a wetland knitted together to create a working port through the ages. It is also the multi-faceted narratives that knit this place together. Standing in Bishop Lucey Park, for example, are multiple monuments – remnants of the blocks of the town walls, the arches for the old Corn Market gates (once behind City Hall), the smiling shawlie within Seamus Murphy’s statue, and the swans of the fountain representing Cork 800. The fountain was placed there in 1985, a nod to the city’s celebration of  800 years since the city’s first charter in 1185. Then there is the imposing sinking tower of Christ Church and its ruinous graveyard to the ghostly feel of the buildings that once stood at the park’s entrance. Along the latter stretch, living memory has recorded Jennings furniture shop, destroyed by fire in 1970; the toy shop of Percy Diamond who was cantor (a singer of liturgical music) at the Jewish synagogue; and the Fountain Café over which the famous hurler Christy Ring had a flat for a time. Of course when I mention just these strands, there are other layers I have not mentioned. The layered memories at times and their fleshed out contexts are endless and often seem timeless.

The presence of all these monuments in the Park often play with my own mind on every walking tour – there is so much one can show and say. These urban spaces seem to slide between the past and present, between material and symbolic worlds. The mural by Mayfield Community Arts on the gable end of the shop next door to the park, entitled “connecting our imagination, how do we imagine a positive future” is apt. The past does play on the imagination; it interconnects between spaces and times into our present and future. It creates at many times, when studying this city, partial memories that the scholar can only reconstruct in part and tentatively in the mind. Memories flow and bend across the story of the development of this North Atlantic big hearted small city.

The kept town walls are a space as a city we need to keep even better. Sometimes we don’t mind these spaces enough. The green rusty plaque on it indicates its age of thirteenth century. During its excavation shards of pottery from Normandy, from the Saintonge region of France, from England, and from other parts of Ireland were also found during the excavation of the wall. For nearly 500 years (1170s to 1690), the town wall symbolised the urbanity of Cork and gave its citizens an identity within the town itself. The walls served as a vast repository of symbolism, iconography and ideology, as symbols of order and social relationships. Indeed the same can be said of all the buildings and spaces the public learn about on this Saturday and next week across talks and walks.

The former town walls like this city were rebuilt in parts by inhabitants through hundreds of years. The river and the tide eroded at their base taking away the various sandstone and limestone blocks and perhaps re-shaping the more resistant ones. The surviving section in Bishop Lucey Park invites the visitor to reflect on life and resistance within the town and how layered the city’s story is. There is wear and tear on the stones presented, which cross from the era of the walled town to the modern city. It invokes the imagination and if anything the wear and tear on our built heritage allows our minds to wonder and reflect about the life and times of people of the past and offers us ideas to take into our future world.  

          Cork Heritage Open Day, 23 August, www.corkheritageopenday.ie

          Kieran’s tours for heritage week:

·         Sunday 24 August 2014 – Eighteenth century Cork historical walking tour, Branding a City-Making a Venice of the North, with Kieran; meet at City Library, Grand Parade, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Monday 25 August 2014 – Shandon Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at North Gate Bridge, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Tuesday 26 August 2014 – Blackpool Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at the North Mon gates, Gerald Griffin Avenue, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Thursday 28 August 2014 – Docklands Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at Kennedy Park, Victoria Road, 7pm (free, duration: two hours).

·         Saturday 30 August 2014,  Douglas Historical Walking Tour with Kieran, meet at St. Columba’s Church Car Park, Douglas, 2pm (free, duration: two hours).

Caption:

756a. Painting a future; members of Mayfield Community Arts in Bishop Lucey Park, 22 June 2012 (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

Events Centre Update

Cork City Council Press Release:

The Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr. Mary Shields today (Friday, August 15) welcomed the commencement of the second phase of the tender process for the Cork Events Centre.

 Cllr. Shields expects a very positive response from interested parties and believes that a preferred tenderer can be secured before the end of the year, with work commencing on the events centre in early 2015.

 “The city’s bid to secure a preferred tenderer has now moved from a competitive dialogue to a competitive negotiation tendering procedure and notice of that was posted on the Official Journal of the European Union yesterday (Thursday, August 14). We continue to have a robust process in place to deal with this part of the procedure and having assessed where we are we believe we can achieve a positive result by engaging in the negotiated tender phase.

“The Cork Events Centre is a crucially important project for the city of Cork and the greater Cork area in terms of jobs, tourism, concerts, exhibitions and conferences. Given the growing improvement in the economy I believe the second phase will attract greater interest and competition from operators and promoters,” said Cllr. Shields.

 An outline of the negotiated process is:

·         Suitability  assessment questionnaire

·         Selection of suitable entities

·         Submission of initial tender

·         Commencement of negotiations

·         Assessment of tenders and selection of preferred tenderer.

 The preferred tenderer will be announced in November/December 2014.

Interested parties will tender for available public funding totaling €14 million, which has been committed by the Government (€10m) and Cork City Council (€4m).  Any further public funding will be on a repayable basis.