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Samhail

Year Awarded

2021

Amount

€49,996

  • Organisation:University of Galway
  • Audience:General Public
  • Format:Non-formal Education
  • Location:Galway
  • Topic:STEAM

Project Summary

We suggest that meaningful societal debate about factors affecting our collective future requires appreciation and understanding of existing social practices and behaviours as historically and culturally situated. Through community & school engagement throughout Galway, Samhail will merge data and expertise from the atmospheric sciences with collaborative artistic practice to establish deep understanding of the atmosphere in the context of environmental and public health. By exploring the relationship between atmospheric changes and human experiences, we can envision the role of participants – and cultural practice -in a more sustainable future.

Carefully facilitated workshops will create space for participants to share stories related to weather and climate, exploring our relationship with the air. These stories will yield a collaborative, co-created bilingual book: “Stories of the Air”, comprising texts, photographs, and maps that will document scientific, cultural, and personally imagined narratives related to the atmosphere.

Samhail focuses on two-way dialogue, giving voice to communities often under-represented in conversations surrounding environmental challenges: promoting global-scale future thinking, positioning STEM within a wider cultural context, and promoting the development of participants’ critical agency in relation to STEM. Samhail is a partnership between scientists and artists, supported by local authorities. The project aims to strengthen links between existing STEAM education and public engagement actors in Galway to establish a regional STEAM ecosystem comprising educators, artists, community/voluntary groups, charities, industry, and local authorities. Samhail will convene representatives of these groups to develop a shared manifesto for this emergent learning ecosystem, and a strategic plan to realise this ambition.