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CoastArts Research Project

CoastARTS: Coastlines as Zones of Ecocultural Crisis - Shaping Resilience through Transnational Performance-based Arts

Dates:

2025 - 2028

Principle Investigator

Prof. Patrick Lonergan, MRIA. https://research.universityofgalway.ie/en/persons/patrick-lonergan/

Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Máiréad Ní Chróinín https://www.maireadnichroinin.com/

About the Project

CoastARTS

CoastARTS is a comparative, multi-sited study proceeding in three broad phases (research and creative design, community-based practice, reflection and analysis), each lasting a year. It will produce new research, notably a book on how performing arts methods can be deployed in other disciplines. With cultural partners, we will also co-create performances, exhibitions and sustainable digital resources that will be accessible to all. The work will unfold collaboratively in Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Norway and the UK, serving as both an analytical window into coastal crises and a mode of collaborative action.

Follow this link for more information about CoastARTS

CoastARTS Ireland

The University of Galway team, led by Professor Patrick Lonergan, is focusing on the Atlantic coasts of Ireland with both historic research (Ireland/Europe’s Atlantic connections) and contemporary practice-led work in coastal areas in Galway and Clare. As the outpost of Ireland’s indigenous culture, those coastal spaces have long been characterised as zones of crises – a status that has developed as they have become integrated into the European and world communications and economic network (the coast of the west of Ireland was the landing point for the first transatlantic telegraph cable, the site of the first transatlantic flight landing in Europe, and the base for much of Europe’s fibre-optic infrastructure).

The project will work with communities on the west coast, to explore and express their living understanding of past and present. Using indigenous performance practices (including Irish-language performance, music, oral performances), the group will recover knowledge of historical crises in coastal zones, as seen in well-known plays such as Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1902) but also in Irish oral culture about the impact of tidal waves/tsunamis, famines, and related topics.

Participants

Royal Holloway University of London, United Kingdom
University of Galway, Ireland
Centre for Social Studies of University of Coimbra, Portugal
University of Oviedo, Spain
Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway

Arts & Community Partners

Work Produced (Outputs)

Arts Projects – Ireland

Performing Arts and the Climate Crisis – Conversations with Irish Theatre Artists (coming soon)
- Episode 1: Hope in a Time of Ecological Crisis - a conversation with Carys Coburn
- Episode 2: Weaving Communities of Care- a conversation with Maeve Stone
- Episode 3: Meeting People Where They're At - a conversation with Luke Casserley
- Episode 4: A Greener Future for Theatre - a conversation with Sinead Wallace and Mike O'Halloran
Practice-Based Research
Transnational connections between artists & communities