Circular Tales: engaging with the past to inspire the future
Year Awarded
2022
Amount
€49,778
- Organisation:University College Cork (UCC)
- Audience:General Public
- Format:Informal Education
- Location:Cork
- Topic:STEAM
Project Summary
Within the last 50 years our economic system has moved to an almost exclusively ‘take-make-waste’- based system with little built-in capability for reuse, repurposing or remanufacturing. What would it mean to be asked to shift consumption and resource use patterns to remain within planetary boundaries, and achieve both environmental and social sustainability? Where might we look for inspiration, to spark discussion, or to bring liveliness and humour to a sometimes daunting topic? UCC’s Cork Folklore Project and Environmental Research Institute bring the past and the future together through sharing and collecting urban and rural stories and memories of reuse, recycling and thrift; of darning, dyeing, repairing, ‘waste’-collecting and creative re-use of all kinds of things.
We will explore how oral testimony can contribute to the broader conversation on sustainability and circular economy, through an online resource and public events where environmental scientists, folklorists, and members of the local and Traveller communities perform, listen and discuss. Through the digital ‘Thrift Memory Map’, we will highlight how stretching resources, repairing or repurposing items and other kinds of creative thriftiness were a central part of life from the 1920s onwards. On our web platform and in public events, environmental scientists, material chemists, engineers, repair shops, eNGOs, communities, policymakers and local authorities will reflect on these stories, exploring how our past relationship with resources – with all its complex elements of social meaning, lack and affluence, shame, pride and creativity – can inform a conversation about future directions in our relationship with material goods.