2025 Programme, Online event, Placemaking, Seminar
Hometown Architect: Catalyst for Community-Led Town Regeneration
03.07.25
20.06.25-26.07.25
Bog Bothy is a touring collection of new work, built outcomes, and ambitious proposals toward a new peatlands architecture, presented by the Irish Architecture Foundation and 12th Field.
Experience Bog Bothy launching on the occasion of the Bog Trotters Festival in Clara, Offaly, on 20-21 June!
After the launch weekend, the Bothy can be booked for daytime use until 30 July. Please email claraheritagesociety@email.com with your request and Cc dean.black@
Bothy: A purpose-built shelter and gathering space for deep engagement with the bog that builds on the design language of Ireland’s peatlands. The Bothy structure has been co-created with communities in Offaly, Louth, and Meath and designed by architects Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson of 12th Field.
Events Programme, 20-21 June (see below): Peatlands panel talks, walks, workshops, and performances across climate action, architecture, and future heritage.
Exhibition: A curated exploration of labour, trace, and climate in the boglands – exploring the bog as both a historical archive and a future landscape, including photographs by Shane Hynan.
Artist in Residence: New work by multidisciplinary performance maker Luke Casserly, which responds to the peatlands, its people, and the Bog Bothy project through deep engagement.
The Bog Bothy project is a Creative Climate Action II – Agents for Change project, funded by Creative Ireland. The Bog Bothy tour, exhibition, and events programme are additionally funded by the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Offaly County Council, Meath County Council, and The Heritage Council.
10:30 – 11:00 Meet at The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
11:00 – 12:15 What We Hold On To: Future Heritage of Ireland’s Peatlands – Panel Discussion
Location: The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
This conversation explores the future of our industrial peatland heritage as sites of cultural memory, ecological restoration, and public potential. As we move beyond extraction, what remains and what possibilities lie within the architectures, infrastructures, and practices shaped by that legacy?
The panel will examine how post-industrial sites can be reimagined through heritage, tourism, and design, asking how we value and work with the material and social traces of industry. Through discussion of current projects and approaches, we will explore how these landscapes might support new forms of ecological, cultural, and civic use and engagement.
Bringing together international, national, and local voices, this session reflects on what we choose to carry forward, and how the transformation of these sites might be led through partnership with communities and shared as part of wider conversations on climate action, memory, and placemaking.
This panel will be joined by Shauna O’ Neill, Chairperson of Cloontuskert Development and Tidy Towns Association; Conor Curley, architectural practitioner and IAF gapLab member; Helen Flanagan, artist and Friends of Ardee Bog member; Lar Joye, Port Heritage Director at Dublin Port and Catrine Hancke, landscape architect at LYTT Architecture.
Moderated by Fernando Fernandez Valverde, Senior Wetland Ecologist at the National Parks and Wildlife Service.
12:15 – 12:45 Break (tea and cake provided)
Location: The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
12:45 – 14:00 Everywhere Architecture: Ways of Being with a Living Landscape – Panel Discussion
Location: The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
This conversation explores how architecture can help us understand and engage with the complex, changing realities of Ireland’s boglands. Framed through the presence of the Bog Bothy, we ask what it means to inhabit, maintain, and care for these landscapes into the future.
The bog is not a wilderness. It is a place long shaped by traces of human presence through work, memory, movement, extraction, and exchange. As these ecologies shift under the pressures of necessary restoration works and climate breakdown, we explore how architecture – not only as building, but as a way of observing, recording, and inhabiting – can support new responsive ways of being with the bog and its more-than-human ecosystems.
The conversation reflects on how material and spatial practices might help hold together, and constitute anew, the social, cultural, and ecological threads of place. It asks what architecture brings to climate action efforts and how placemaking in the peatlands might support new forms of relation between ecologies of people, landscape, and time.
This panel will be joined by Shane Hynan, artist and photographer; Shirley Clerkin, Project Manager at Wetlands Restoration Scheme, Just Transition; Andrew Ó Murchú, architect and co-founder of BothAnd Group and Lesley Young, Director of Bothy Project.
Moderated by Jo Linehan, editor of the Sunday Times Ireland CLIMATE Supplement and sustainability columnist for Irish Country Magazine.
14:00 – 15:00 Lunch Break
15:15 – 17:00 What We Hold On To – Workshop with 12th Field Architects
Location: The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
Run by 12th Field’s David Jameson and Evelyn D’Arcy, this workshop invites participants to collectively imagine futures for Ireland’s peatlands. The session will invite participants to develop and co-design a speculative yet grounded peatland masterplan for Offaly and the wider midlands. This is a participatory workshop with discussion, mapping and vision building.
15:15 – 17:00 Autobiographical Landscapes – Workshop with Artist in Residence Luke Casserly
Location: Bothy Field
Meeting point: The Old Bank at 15:00 for shuttles to the bothy field. Participants will be dropped back at the Old Bank after the workshop.
The Bog Bothy Artist in Residence, Luke Casserly, will run a workshop based on his work and research responding to the bog to produce a site-responsive soundscape. Luke is a multidisciplinary performance-maker from Longford, whose work weaves together ecological research, autobiography, sound art, and place as a way of carving out space for new possibilities to emerge between live performance and physical landscapes.
This workshop is an opportunity to engage with Luke as he tests, shares, and invites participation in aspects of his process. The workshop will inform his final output from the Bog Bothy project.
17:00-18:30 Break
18:30 – 19:30 An Evening at the Bothy
Location: Bothy Field
Shuttles from The Old Bank to the Bothy Field will depart from 18:00 until 18:30. The shuttle will return attendees to The Old Bank from 19:30.
As our day of panels and workshops draws to a close, the Bog Bothy becomes a stage for movement, performance, and storytelling. An Evening at the Bothy is a curated event of live performances organised in collaboration with the Bog Trotters Festival. Through embodied practices and performance, artists respond to the histories and futures of Ireland’s peatlands, conjuring new ways of being with these bogs and one another. This event marks a moment of collective reflection and celebration, inviting audiences to experience the bog as a living cultural landscape.
Booking recommended but drop-ins also welcome.
Saturday’s tours will be run in collaboration with Bog Trotters Festival. The full Bog Trotters schedule for the day will be available soon.
11:00 – 12:00 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
Location: Bothy Field
Meeting point: Church Street, Clara, R35 FW72
A Shuttle bus will be available to transport attendees to the Bothy Field.
Shuttles from The Old Bank to the Bothy Field will depart from 13:50 The shuttle will return attendees to The Old Bank from 15:00.
Join the designers of the Bothy, 12th Field, for a guided tour and conversation exploring the origins of Bog Bothy, the architectural design of the bothy, and the ideas that shaped it. Hear how the structure responds to the peatland landscape through a community co-design approach, and engage with the accompanying research and exhibition situated in the field. This is a chance to reflect on architecture and placemaking as a tool for climate action, collective care, and imagining site-specific futures.
14:00 – 15:00 Bog Bothy Tour with 12th Field
Location: Bothy Field
Meeting point: Church Street, Clara, R35 FW72
A Shuttle bus will be available to transport attendees to the Bothy Field.
Shuttles from The Old Bank to the Bothy Field will depart from 13:50 The shuttle will return attendees to The Old Bank from 15:00.
Join the designers of the Bothy, 12th Field, for a guided tour and conversation exploring the origins of Bog Bothy, the architectural design of the bothy, and the ideas that shaped it. Hear how the structure responds to the peatland landscape through a community co-design approach, and engage with the accompanying research and exhibition situated in the field. This is a chance to reflect on architecture and placemaking as a tool for climate action, collective care, and imagining site-specific futures.
All events in the programme are free, but booking is required for the panel discussions, workshops, and tours as places are limited.
Please note, we are charging a no-show fee of €5.00. If you will not be able to attend, please cancel your booking in advance and your card will not be charged.
Main Venue: The Old Bank, Church Street, Clara, Co. Offaly, R35 FW72
Bothy Field: 53°19’53.0″N 7°37’43.8″W
From Dublin
From Limerick
From Galway
Please note, there is no parking at the Bothy Field.
On-street parking is available in Clara Town, or at the Clara Bog Visitor Centre, Clashawaun, Ballycumber Road, Clara, Co. Offaly, 89RJ+RX
Camping is available at Clara House Estate 53°20’33.6″N 7°37’17.2″W with campers from the Bog Trotters festival.
There are a variety of B&Bs and guest houses in Clara and Tullamore – pre-booking is advised.
If you have any accessibility needs or requirements please let us know prior to the event and we will make every effort to make suitable accommodations for you. Email katie.fitzgerald@architecturefoundation.ie or phone us on +353 1 874 7200.
ISL interpretation can be arranged on request.
Toilets:
The Old Bank has (wheelchair accessible) toilets which will be accessible for attendees throughout the weekend.
Accessible portaloo will be available on the Bothy Field.
Transport:
The shuttle bus between the venues is not wheelchair accessible but alternative transport can be arranged if needed, just let us know.
Please note that there is no parking at the Bothy Field. However, on-street parking is available in Clara Town, or at the Clara Bog Visitor Centre, Clashawaun, Ballycumber Road, Clara, Co. Offaly, 89RJ+RX
There is a 10-minute walk (650m) from Clara Train Station to The Old Bank.
There is a 30-minute walk (2000m) from The Old Bank to the Bothy Field.
Venues:
The Old Bank is fully wheelchair accessible.
The bothy is in a field with uneven ground and may be difficult to access for those with limited mobility. Limited seating will be available for those who require it on the Bothy Field.
If you have any questions not answered here, please email info@architecturefoundation.ie or call us at +353 1 874 7200.
Image treatment by Oscar Torrans, original photograph by Shane Hynan.
03.07.25
06.06.25-22.06.25