The people of Galway are invited to join in a free inter-generational event open to all which will be facilitated by Choreographer and Dance Movement Therapist Bernadette Divilly and partners in The Walking Wisdom Woodquay Project.
Woodquay is a place and a community in transition. Woodquay is having a gathering, in order to honour through mapping, local knowledge and memory. Places of significance will be mapped using the wisdom of the body and mindful listening. The event takes places on Saturday 24th January 2015 from 2pm to 5pm starting from The Rowing Club, Woodquay.
Why map Woodquay? Woodquay is a vital city centre community with many people from different walks of life sharing a city landscape outside the walls of the medieval city of Galway. Today, although hampered by heavy traffic, Woodquay is a place rich in memory, full of potency and creative possibility. Many of the older members of the community are in a more advanced stage of life and some of their very specific and particular knowledge will be of great value if recorded through mapping. Examples of this knowledge could include gems of wisdom about places of historical interest, craic, language, a place of trade, crafts, rituals, characters, species of wild life in water, air and land and Galway’s waterways.
Walking Wisdom Woodquay is an Arts Participation Project with an objective to use the wisdom of the body to articulate challenges to urban design. Bernadette Divilly, the project originator, wants to honour local knowledge and memory; “This needs to be documented so that future generations of architects, city planners, and citizens of the city can be informed”.
Walking Wisdom Woodquay is funded by the Arts Council and Galway City Council and project partners include Galway City Architects Office, the Town Hall Theatre, Galway Dance Project, Galway One World Centre, and NUI Galway Ómos Áite Irish Place Studies and Community Knowledge Initiative.