THE Lost Palace of Lixnaw project by Richard Walsh has had a busy summer so far with May and June workshops in Lixnaw Boys School and Drumclogh NS focussing on the 18th century history of Lixnaw.
The Arts Office/Creative Ireland Kerry and the Architecture Conservation Office at Kerry County Council issued a call back in January for creative practitioners working in the arts, in architecture, in heritage and in design to collaborate on a project which exposes the rich cultural heritage of Lixnaw.
Richard Walsh is an actor and theatre director from North Kerry and an important item aspect within Creative Ireland Kerry is enabling professional creative practitioners to work on exciting projects in local communities.
Continued below…
Using theatre as a way to engage the community, the project also includes collaborations with Zita Monahan as drama facilitator, Miriam Donaghue as costume designer and Michael Holly as film-maker.
This Creative Ireland Kerry project, facilitated by Kerry County Council Arts Office, actively engages citizens in the area with creativity whilst investigating cultural heritage. The project has great intergenerational aspects and includes learning the history of place, it’s landscape, build infrastructures and people
Working with the children to devise scenes and characters from the period resulted in filmed performances as a way of understanding their history in a new way.
The project produced 3 re-enactment videos with the children covering the many different aspects of the history of 18th century Lixnaw:
1776 Lixnaw – The Kerry Springer Show
1776 Lixnaw – The Earl of Kerry in Versaille
1776 Lixnaw – A report on the Whiteboy movement
As well as the school children and their parents, the project also engaged with people in the village of Lixnaw who formed part of the audience as the scenes were filmed.
The films are currently being used to engage the local community and promote the project and the themes and topics focused on in these films wil be revisted with Richard’s talk on the project in September 2019.
Keep an eye out on Kerry County Council Arts social media channels for further updates on the project.