2025 Programme, Online event, Placemaking, Seminar
Hometown Architect: Catalyst for Community-Led Town Regeneration
03.07.25
20.06.25-21.06.25
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!
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 (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.
All events 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.
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.
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.
Shauna O’Neill is from Cloontuskert, County Roscommon’s only Bord na Móna village, established in 1952. She is Chairperson of the Cloontuskert Development and Tidy Towns Association, the group that submitted the initial idea to the Irish Architecture Foundation’s Reimagine Placemaking Programme that later became the heart of the Reimagine Workers’ Villages project. Shauna and the Cloontuskert community have worked alongside architects, Evelyn D’Arcy and David Jameson, in recent years in the development of the Reimagine Cloontuskert Master Plan for their village, which has captured the community’s vision for their former Bord na Móna village and inspired several new projects to date.
Connor Curley is an Irish architectural practitioner based in London, and a member of the IAF gapLab program. Drawing on familial relationships to the peat industry in Shannonbridge, Co. Offaly, he has studied the peatlands as a post industrial landscape. Investigating the cultural and environmental impact of the peat industry, his masters thesis explored how the landscapes and local communities of the bog may move forward while retaining and celebrating both their modern and ancient history.
Friends of Ardee Bog (FAB) is a community group whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote Ardee Bog, which is Ireland’s most easterly raised bog. The group formed to advocate against a planned road development which threatens the bog, and in the past five years has grown into a diverse group working around conservation, ecological restoration, community education, the arts and culture, and local history. FAB will be represented by long-term member Helen Flanagan, a socially engaged artist and writer from Ardee.
Lar Joye is Port Heritage Director at Dublin Port since 2017, responsible for the 300-year-old Port Archive and for the Port City Integration, including 16km of greenways and a distributed museum network from the Diving Bell museum on Sir Rogerson’s Quay.
Previously he curated the award-winning Soldiers and Chiefs: The Irish Soldier at Home and Abroad from 1550 exhibition at Collins Barracks, described as a museum with a museum.
He played a key role in the Decade of Commemorations through a variety of projects: the exhibitions 1913 Lockout: Impact and Aftermath and Banners Unfurled, the WWI exhibitions Recovered Voices and War in the Mud, and the Irish Soldier on the Western Front. He collaborated with An Post in the creation of the GPO Witness History museum and was historical adviser for An Post’s 2016 commemorative stamps. He also worked with Anu productions on the plays Pals: The Irish at Gallipoli, Sunder, These Rooms, Canaries, and The Book of Names.
A graduate of UCD, Leicester University, and the Getty Leadership Institute, he is a board member of the Military Heritage of Ireland Trust and former Chair of Blue Shield Ireland. Lar has served on the IMA board of directors since 2015 and was elected IMA Chair in October 2023.
Catrine Hancke is a landscape architect at the Danish studio LYTT Architecture, working comprehensively in the field between nature and architecture. Working with classic Nordic virtues, such as a strong sense of place, sustainable and honest use of materials, and in a constant dialogue with context and future users, Catrine has completed several projects in wetlands, bogs, and along the coast of Denmark. By using architecture as a tool of communicating the history, nature, and sense of space in the landscape, it is LYTT’s goal to achieve meaningful architecture with a lasting imprint.
Fernando is a Senior Wetland Ecologist with the National Parks and Wildlife Service. With over 20 years’ experience, his work focuses on peatland conservation and restoration. He has led on national and site-specific conservation objectives, best practice guidelines, and restoration programmes such as the Peatlands Climate Action Scheme. Fernando contributes to national conservation policy, represents NPWS at national and international levels, and communicates scientific findings to both professional and public audiences.
Shane Hynan’s arts practice centres on photography with experimental elements in sound, video, collage, and sculpture. He has exhibited extensively in Ireland and internationally in China, Germany and the UK. He has received multiple awards from the Arts Council, Creative Ireland, and Kildare Arts. His Beneath | Beofhód’project draws upon conceptual, performative and subjective documentary approaches to reflect on the endangered bog habitats of the Irish midlands. He’s also part of the Tóch | Dig collective and secretary of his local bog group.
Shirley Clerkin is Project Manager at Wetlands Restoration Scheme, Just Transition.
Lesley Young has been director of the residency organisation Bothy Project since 2021. She is interested in institutional structures and how they can respond to and influence their context. In her current role at Bothy Project she is working to balance what is gained by artistic residents and the local communities Bothy Project is part of, for the benefit of all. Between 2007 and 2010 Lesley initiated and ran The Salford Restoration Office in Manchester with James N. Hutchinson, curating exhibitions with Jeremy Deller, Dan Shipsides, and Artur Zmijewski, and developing projects with Imogen Stidworthy and Katya Sander. She was a founding member of the curatorial co-operative Chapter Thirteen, Glasgow (2017-22) and in 2021 worked with Irish artist Sean Lynch to make Tak’ Tent O’ Time Ere Time Be Tint, part of the 2021 Edinburgh Art Festival. She is based in Glasgow.
Bothy Project is an arts organisation that provides residencies in bespoke small-scale, off-grid spaces in rural Scotland to allow artists to explore creativity, landscape and living simply. Initially imagined in 2011 by artist Bobby Niven and architect Iain MacLeod, Bothy Project was set up to give artists the chance to develop their practice within the Scottish landscape.
There have been three bothies: Inshriach Cairngorms National Park; Sweeney’s Bothy, Isle of Eigg; and Pig Rock Bothy, National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh. Sweeney’s is currently hosting residencies all year round, and bothies in other locations are planned. Since 2021 Bothy Project has been knitting-in those that live locally to the bothies by inviting them to participate and influence programming.
Jo Linehan is the editor of the Sunday Times Ireland CLIMATE supplement and a sustainability columnist for Irish Country Magazine.
Having gained first-class honours in the MSc in Management for Sustainable Development at Dublin City University in 2023, Jo focuses on supporting ESG education and conversation through her podcast, Futurist, partnerships, events and writing.
Luke Casserly is a multidisciplinary performance maker from Longford. His 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. His projects have brought audiences through city streets, back gardens, train stations, beaches, and a bog in the Irish Midlands which have led to the creation of a network of wildflower meadows across Ireland (1000 Miniature Meadows, 2020-23), the planting of 1000 indigenous trees (Root, 2021), and the development of an organic perfume made using botanicals from the Irish bog (Distillation, 2023). Luke is a recipient of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award and was selected for the Norman Houston Multidisciplinary Commissioning Award with Solas Nua (Washington, DC), as well as the International Forum at Theatertreffen (Berlin Festspiele). In 2024, he was appointed as a Biodiversity Artist in Residence with Dublin City Council. He holds a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies (Trinity College Dublin) and a Certificate in Art and Ecological Practice (NCAD).
Evelyn D’Arcy is an architect and educator, and co-founder of 12th Field. In parallel with her work in practice as an architect since graduating from UCD in 2005, Evelyn has worked as a creative practitioner with various organisations including the Irish Architecture Foundation, Dublin City Council, Fingal County Council, and the schools of Architecture at UCD and TU Dublin. She has facilitated a wide range of projects exploring themes of architecture with people of all ages, in community and in educational settings. Her work comes about through exchange of stories, studying local history, ecology and architecture and in gathering site-specific inspiration, to help people build a stronger connection with their world.
David Jameson is an architect and one half of 12th Field. David studied in TU Dublin before working in Dublin, Paris and Stockholm. In 2015 he co-founded tun – architecture + design. tun specialise in new educational spaces and have won national architectural awards for their recently completed school on Harcourt Terrace in Dublin. David is a design tutor in the School of Architecture, TU Dublin. Through his work in 12th Field David has extensively documented the vernacular architecture of the peatlands. His article on this subject, ‘The Built Bog’ was recently published in type.ie.
Jools Gilson’s practice focuses on environment, community, and rural landscapes, moving between choreography, writing, and installation. Her large scale work The Knitting Map (2005) toured the US as part of Mapping Climate Change from 2021–24. She is a member of The Place Collective (See Here Now: Art in a Time of Urgency, Grizedale Forest Gallery, UK, 4 April–8 June 2025). She received an Arts Council Dance Bursary in 2023. Tempestries is currently funded by Research Ireland (Insight). She is Professor of Creative Practice at UCC.
Aoibhinn is a dance artist working across the dance, music, and visual arts field. Her practice is often site-specific and public. She intertwines movement, costume, and sound to create performances which seek to challenge today’s societal limitations around human interaction and connection. Her work has been supported by The Arts Council, Light Moves, Bell Table, VISUAL, Project Art Centre, Carlow Arts Festival, Dance Limerick, UL Concert Hall, Temple Bar Gallery, Music Town, The Complex, IMMA, Dance Ireland, Glastonbury Festival, Electric Picnic, Altogether Now, among other venues and festivals.
Kate Flood is a peatland researcher and community volunteer working at the intersection of social science, ecology, and the arts to explore the relationships and interconnections between people and peatlands. Her current work examines the cultural, social, medicinal, and ecological histories and uses of plants and of the bog itself through the Bog Cabinet of Curiosities, developed as part of the Gnáthóga Nádúrtha project collective.
03.07.25
06.06.25-22.06.25