Workshops

Our shared practice is based in an ecological thinking with and through the body, and is directed towards community building processes motivated towards enhancing ecological futures. Since 2019 we have developed broad community alignments, inviting others to participate in co-creative embodiments and eco-civic actions. Our eco-somatic work is developed through what we describe as the ‘multi-temporal body’, drawing on adaptive physical processes as a means to engage with diversity in the landscape through time-based movement practices in order to build communities of knowledge, in a slow but urgent devotion to radical change.

Our work to date has focused on bringing rural communities together to share creative approaches to adaptation as a strategy for climate, cultural and societal change, moving towards a post carbon world. For the past five years we have co-facilitated a broad range of adaptive site-based collaborative arts projects globally, working with key stakeholders in sustainability and environmental processes that have played a pivotal role in facilitating dialogue across local communities in direct response to change and adaptation.

Re-Wilding Bodies: Le Chéile

Re-Wilding Bodies: Le Chéile is a facilitation mode which Maria devised to deliver eco-somatic dance improvisation workshops to inclusively hold all levels and abilities of movers together. In this slow mindful movement creative practice of deep listening, interconnections are reanimated through embodied exploration of the senses and natural elements associated with the seasonal timelines. This dance process is embedded with our ethos of soft devotion to radical change.

Improvisations evolve through embodied entanglements; meeting and witnessing, with Maria guiding deeper explorations through movement mnemonics for new patterns to emerge, for change, futuring; unfolding with vital materiality, interdependency, decolonising time. Allowing research to unfold as an ethical, relational, co-creative practice.

Le Chéile is Irish for together, implying the strength of a community, or the fundamental connection between all things.

Techniques: An experimental mode of movement facilitation that incorporates tools from Antoinette Spillane's Seasonal Scores, Wuxing-Chinese 5 elements, Body Mind Centering, Authentic movement, Alexander Technique, Joan Davies' Origins, Mary Nunan’s Release technique. Also includes: aromatherapy, biodynamics gardening and knowledge of Irish intangible cultural heritage with the lunar calendar in the alchemy mix.

Weekly workshops ongoing in North Clare since October 2023 and this facilitation process is available for sharing elsewhere on request. Phone 087 7711033.

Project Affectionate

Seasonal Scores

Commencing in 2023, based in Ennistymon, North Clare, Maria invited artists and dancers to join her weekly workshop sharings Seasonal Scores, an improvisational eco-somatic dance movement anchored in Antoinette Spillanes Still Point practice incorporating Chinese 5 elements and evolving out of Body Mind Centering, Authentic movement, Release technique, etc with material elements included in the interconnected process.

The group dynamics became so strong over the years since Project Affectionate was formed in 2024 – this multicultural, intergenerational group, which includes artists, ecologists, doctors, dancers Dr Rachel Sweeney and Dr Russell Brown, has 12 members. We are united in our interest in and concern for the environment and how that relates to our bodies and through our bodies, in dance.

For more info, or to join in our weekly Wednesday evening practice please phone 087 7711033.

Community Climate Action in North Clare

In 2024 we were successful in being selected to partake in The Common Ground Project - Community Climate Action in North Clare.

Two members joined representatives from other local community groups in a day-long workshop on one weekend each month, with a guest speaker in the morning, followed by an outdoor practical session on the land. Hands-on sessions covered organic food growing, tree planting, meadow making, composting, removing invasive species, recycling and repairing, habitat creation. We learned a lot through educational sessions, talks on rewilding, climate grief and anxiety, permaculture gardening, community gardening, and climate action.

It was so informative and great to connect beyond our silos with other community groups and be acknowledged that eco-dance is also work for the future! From that experience we created and offered the community participatory dance project: Embodied Activism for Water Wellbeing.

Participation in P(art)Y Here and Now live monthly events, including Culture Night 2024, Ennis and Performance Art Festival in Ennistymon, 16 th August 2024.

P(art)Y Here and Now is a monthly participatory live art event that Project Affectionate joined a few times in this collaboration but found the soft rules of engagement in dance set up boundaries that we felt made us not a right fit to this collaborative approach. We were very grateful to have been part of the experiment and learned a lot.

Photos: top to bottom; Parsley alter at the Embodied Activism for water wellbeing workshop. Participants sharing a post dance meal made by dancers.

Photos from P(art=Y Performance Art Festival 16-8-24

Alex Rafferty, Sofia Anada, Roisin Brett

Maria participating in the P(art)y monthly workshop with Kate at P(art) in 2024.

Photos taken with kind permission of all movers.

Blankets of Peace

The Blankets of Peace project invites local artists and inhabitants of Lisdoonvarna town in North Clare to offer their creative responses, and to drop their blankets into The Elbow Room in the Burren Artists Studios at the Gentian Press (see below dates). The blankets will then form an installation for the public, and will be further used for multiple peace gatherings moving into 2024 and beyond!

EMBODY PEACE ..... CREATE BLANKETS

To source this creativity in embodied peace, we start every hour during the below opening timings with a simple 20m guided movement practice, open to all abilities and experiences, entitled "A Pinch of Peace". This is offered as a way to experience ease through sensorial awareness and deep listening to the body. You may choose to witness or to partake, as you wish. A section of the studio will be dedicated to working on a blanket of peace during these times.

Polytunnel art: Ukrainian-Irish Herbal project

Spring 2024
Maria was invited by the North Burren Community Group to design a community project to open cross-cultural sharings with the new Ukrainians finding themselves in Bellharbour, the tiny village Maria grew up in.

Funding was awarded for the delivery of the Polytunnel Art Project with the Ukrainians in Bellharbour (Healthy Clare Micro Fund 2024), where Maria co-shared the Facilitation for 6 classes with local horticulturalist Donnacha Fahy.

Placemaking

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