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Community engagement is a core component of Wilderland, and we support artists who are working in the fields of socially engaged, interdisciplinary, collaborative and co-creative arts practices. Over 2023-25 our project artists are engaging with the communities living and or working in the townlands on the periphery of Wild Nephin as users and stakeholders of the landscape, such as local residents, landowners, farmers, and recreational users of Wild Nephin, in the research and development of their artwork, and may also choose to collaborate with these groups in the creation of their artwork.

Wilderland is seeking to explore these communities’ lived experience of the landscape, and how they relate to it both conceptually and through their activities and interaction with their local environment. This will be supported by public workshops and participatory events such as guided creative and educational explorations of the habitat with the project artists, NPWS rangers, local and expert guides.

Through a combination of these activities, Wilderland is seeking to co-create a deep-map of the locality - a contextual and multi-layered mapping of place that takes into account the physical, cultural, historical, experiential and anecdotal information of an area, to create a holistic picture of place from the ground up.

We see this as the first step towards understanding and reconsidering our place with in the larger ecological systems of the area, and in the co-creation process for communities to build solutions toward informed and effective positive climate action.

Project artists are asked to support this through their activities for this commission, and to engage with Wild Nephin and the townlands and communities of place or interest on its periphery so the unique experience of place can inform and guide the creative evolution of their artworks.

Each artist will be assigned a locality or community for initial engagement, however artists may also work with any of the townlands or communities of place within the wider project, or across a number of each.

Artists may also choose to work with a community of interest across a number of locations, or to connect or create a group to explore common themes of engagement, as opposed to focusing on a single locality.

Artists are encouraged to foster links and seek opportunities for collaboration between communities, and to generate opportunities for conversation, collaboration and creative exchange across and between groups, where feasible and applicable to the development of their artwork.