Summer School 2024

Reflecting on Decolonial Development through an Indigenous and Feminist Critical Lens.

The DSAI Summer School provides a focussed 2-day programme of workshops exploring research methods for development. The first day, 30th May, will be online, while the second day, 31st May, will be in-person at Technological University of the Shannon (TUS), Thurles. The event will engage NGOs, Policy Makers, and Academics both as contributors to the programme and as participants. Connecting research, policy and practice, the programme will bring together international experts through interactive sessions to enhance the professional development of participants. Sharanya Nayak, an indigenous community activist from India will provide the key note address at this years event. Student or early career researchers in particular benefit from the Summer School.

The fee is just €5 for students and €20 for others (flat fee) for the two days, which includes lunch on the second day.

This event is jointly organised by DSAI Gender and Civil Society Study Groups. It is supported by DSA Ireland, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), and Technological University of the Shannon (TUS).

Find most up to date detail on the programme on the DSAI website here.

Please note: We are unable to provide certificates of attendance/participation

Workshops:

There will be four workshops run in parallel sessions. Participants will need to book their workshop in advance and to choose one from either time slot. Three of the workshops will be conducted in Cashel and transportation will be provided there and back. A short break will be provided for a light lunch. Workshop A: Guided Tour of the Rock of Cashel will be reserved for those participating in the full conference.

Workshop A: Guided Tour of the Rock of Cashel

12:00-2:00 Cashel

Set on a dramatic outcrop of limestone in the Golden Vale, The Rock of Cashel, iconic in its historic significance, possesses the most impressive cluster of medieval buildings in Ireland. Among the monuments to be found there is a round tower, a high cross, a Romanesque chapel, a Gothic cathedral, an abbey, the Hall of the Vicars Choral and a fifteenth-century Tower House.

As part of the summer school, participants will have the opportunity to visit the rock of Cashel. The office of Public works will provide a guided tour and there will be time to explore this ancient spiritual, political and geological site. The bus will leave from Thurles at 12:00, Booking is essential.

Irish mythology has it that the Rock of Cashel was formed after the Devil took a huge bite out of the aptly named Devil’s Bit Mountain twenty miles north of Cashel. There is a large gap in the mountain between one outcrop of rock and another small plateau. This was supposedly done to evade Saint Patrick who was banishing the pagan thoughts and customs that had ruled Ireland for millennia. (Heritage Ireland, Office of Public Works, 2024)

Workshop B: Image Theatre and Intervention, Introduction to Forum Theatre

TUS Campus Thurles - 12:00-2:00

Theatre for Change Galway CLG is a distinguished community-based theater company situated in the heart of Galway. Specializing in Forum Theatre Applied Drama, our company is dedicated to utilizing the transformative power of theater to engage individuals across diverse community and educational settings.

Drawing from the principles pioneered by Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed, participants will be guided through various creative expressions, allowing them to delve into pertinent societal themes. These techniques serve as powerful catalysts for personal and communal growth, equipping participants with invaluable capacity-building skills and fostering a culture of self-advocacy.

Theatre for Change Galway Facilitators, Janna Lindsrom, Ana Lessa and Anne Loftus will host a workshop where they will support those participating to design and perform a short forum play using Theatre for the Oppressed Techniques. This will then be forumed so that other participants (as spectators) will then intervene to change the outcome…… to try out their ideas of alternatives often referred to as rehearsal for life and how this can then be continued to practice Legislative Theatre.

By embracing the ethos of applied drama, we strive not only to empower individuals on a personal level but also to effect broader societal change. Through our commitment to creative engagement and meaningful dialogue, we endeavour to cultivate a more inclusive and just society, one performance at a time.

Theatre For Change Galway

tforcgalway@gmail.com

Janna Lindrom - Drama Therapy and Applied Drama Facilitator

Ana Lessa - Drama and Education - Facilitator

Anne Loftus - Community Development Facilitator

Workshop C: Poetry and Spoken word As Research

Cashel Library - 2:30-4:30

Fióna Bolger is a poet and creative facilitator. She has worked both in Ireland and abroad with new and more experienced writers, offering spaces to experiment and build confidence. Her facilitation and creative practice focus on plurilingualism, using all the words in your head. She has worked with multilingual, migrant and Traveller writers over the past few years. Her practice is rooted in a trauma informed, anti-racist pedagogy.

Helen Hutchinson s an Irish Traveller poet. Her family was one of the first Traveller families to be housed under the Itinerancy Act of 1967. Assimilation cost her family a lot, six suicides: two brothers, three nephews and a niece. She now writes through poetry of the journey through oppression, discrimination and racism. She tries to give a voice to other Travellers and at the same time it is therapeutic for her. She was one of the founders of Mincéir Mislí, later to become Pavee Point. A book of her poems is to be launched by Tipperary ETB in June, From the Dirt Lane back to the Open Roads.

Gonchigkhand Byambaa is a social worker and writer from Mongolia. She is one of the founders of Migrant Women Na hÉireann, which seeks to raise awareness and provide support to victims of domestic and gender-based violence. She writes about Mongolian culture in an attempt to honour her parents’ legacy and illustrate the beauty and hardship that comes with a traditional nomadic lifestyle.

Mawie Barrett is a Druid who grew up in the Comeragh Mountains in County Waterford. She defines herself as a mountain woman. She believes there is a language in landscape that seeps into her by osmosis and fires her imagination. Her work is sprinkled with metaphor, the ordinary everyday trickles out of her subconscious and tells the deeper story. Her forte this far is history which she expresses in fiction and nonfiction. Writing brings Mawie great joy and expression it is the place where she channels her insights and reflection. Nature, people and travel are her major influences. Mawie is a poet and Librarian in Cashel library (the druids cauldron 2022)

Fiona will lead this workshop which will provide an opportunity to frame, compile and share poetry which reflects an indigenous and feminist perspective and experience. It will highlight how poetry can be used as a process of research, documentation and analysis. The poets participating will also share and reflect on their work.

Dr Nita Mishra is Assistant Professor in the department of Politics & Public Administration at the University of Limerick. Her research, widely published in various forms, focuses rights-based approaches to development, women's empowerment, understanding peace, decoloniality, and civil society. Nita has worked on 'development' with research organisations, funding bodies, and civil society in the Global South (India) and has been a volunteer in the Global North (Ireland) for over a decade and a half. She is Vice President (Education & Next Generation) in the European Association Of Development Research & Training Institutes (EADI). Her poetry, critically acclaimed as the future of Irish feminisms, merges her own stories with narratives of women she met across three continents.

Workshop D: Community Engagement & Creative Expression.

Brú Ború Cashel - 2:30-4:30

Uma Magal owns Fenugreek Productions, a boutique studio for media and film work, and training. She has master’s degrees in Political Science (University of Hyderabad) and Communication (JMI, Delhi), and an MFA (Temple University). She produced a PBS weekly series, “News 6”, taught film and media at San Francisco State and Temple Universities, and served on the boards of Asian Arts Initiative and Independent Film and Video Association in Philadelphia. Her latest film “Other Kohinoors, The Rocks of Hyderabad” is a resonant documentary love letter to the unique rocky terrain and culture of Hyderabad. Celebrating how the landscape inspirits the culture in its art, craft, folklore, poetry, songs, architecture, cuisine. Marking the affection and respect with which the landscape is held. With an energetic rap song as 'Sutradhar narrator' carrying the storytelling there is also a sharing of the sorrow over what has been lost in the past decades. (IMDb 2024)

Delores Crerar manages the Athlone Family Resource Centre who facilitated the Intergenerational Crochet Communitas project. A project which saw a lot of crochet going on in and around Athlone over the Covid lockdown. The results of which were displayed in full multicolour hanging in the window of Athlone Library and in other areas of the town. It was originally hoped to make one large blanket from squares of crochet and flowers sent in by participants but the response was so great that there was enough for five. This prompted the creation of a trail and facebook page with clues to encourage people to follow the clues, to see the others and spread the word about the project. (Westmeath Independent 2021)

Sharanya Nayak a non-indigenous solidarity worker with the Adivasi (indigenous peoples) of central India she has worked through internal conflict, destructive industrialization and drought-migration conditions. She has first–hand experience of working with women for their empowerment through participatory processes and with tribal communities on mothertongue based education and developing ‘culturally appropriate curriculum’ using approaches of social history documentation and appreciative enquiry with community elders, tribal youth and school going children. She is a Member of Rangmatipadar Adivasi Commune, Koraput and has worked as a Programme Officer with ActionAid India. Sharanya has a Law Degree and a Masters in Sociology.

This workshop will explore the use of art as a means of engaging, reflecting with and mobilising community. This process can be on a range of different levels responding to a range of different needs within community. From social interaction and creative engagement to political awakening and action.

Caroline Coyle’s PhD Awakening the Goddess Within: An Autoethnographic and Poetic Inquiry into Older Women's Ageing and Identity in Ireland doi:10.46289/NN43R6T4 explores older women’s ageing and identity in the context of the Festival of the Seasons Celtic Rituals at Uisneach, Ireland (School of Creative Arts, Film Media and Television Dept, Women, Ageing and Media (WAM) research centre, University of Gloucestershire, UK). Caroline’s research interests include the use of creative participatory methods, such as collaborative art, poetry, mythology and rituals as research tools of discovery. She uses autoethnography, her own practice as a performance artist, poetic inquiry, and the arts based mediums of storytelling, poetry, art, song, radio and theatre to engage in contextual relationality and create liminal, potentially transformative spaces, within which, new stories, identities and meanings may be negotiated.