Helen Shaw, Tóchar Stories

The children in Lanesborough Primary School, Co Longford look out at the ESB Power Station. It was built in the 1950s to generate energy from peat, but decommissioned in December 2020. It was once a vital part of the Bord na Móna and ESB partnership generating peat-fired electricity that fuelled the Irish economy through the industrial milling of peat from local Longford bogs. Today the building is abandoned and its future is uncertain.

“There’s a peregrine falcon living on the roof”, one of the boys in 3rd Class tells us and it seems fitting that nature, if nothing else, is reclaiming the station. “That’s the fastest bird, the fastest animal on Earth”, Longford’s biodiversity officer, Adam Mulvihill responds. “I knew that”, one of the 4th Class boys says, nodding as the peregrine falcon has become something of a class mascot.

We’re working with Lanesborough Primary School connecting the children with nature, and the boglands, through creativity and imagination. When we first visited in March and tagged along with Longford artist, Sophie Carroll Hunt, who is creating a school yard mural under the Creative Ireland BLAST scheme, the children showed us a beautiful new workbook on Longford Boglands Wildlife that had just been delivered to the school. It is the work of the heritage and biodiversity officers in Longford County Council with the Longford County Librarian, Biodiversity in Schools and the workshop artist is Lanesborough native, Mary Fleming from Rusty Lemon Designs.

When we saw the book we immediately reached out to Adam to see if he would facilitate a workshop around nature in the bogs in advance of a Tóchar Stories visit by the children to the famous Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre not far from Lanesborough.

In Lanesborough Primary School 3rd and 4th Classes are together under Miss Tully with 5th and 6th Classes together under Mr Corr. While Adam is running his bog nature workshop with Miss Tully’s pupils, Longford artist Luke Casserly, who actually went to this school, is facilitating a creative storytelling session. So while Adam hosts a quiz that brings in the magic bog-builder, sphagnum moss, and tiny insect-eating, bog-loving sundews, Luke motivates the children to become nature, creating short performances imagining themselves as trees, birds, bogs or whatever part of nature they wanted to be and performing short scenes for each other. And while Adam has the lovely Longford Boglands Wildlife book to show and tell, Luke is wearing his mossy ‘bog bothy’ hat; an easy ice-breaker. Luke was artist in residence with the Bog Bothy project last year when it toured in Co Offaly and Co Meath.

For Luke, being back in his old primary school sharing his own artistic work and relationship with the bogs felt like drawing a full circle.   “These walls literally have memories for me because this is my old classroom. So very happy memories. It’s, yeah, kind of surreal being back. I never really thought that my practice as an artist would intersect in this very meaningful way”.

Luke has previously worked with Tóchar Stories in our community storytelling day in Carbury, Co. Kildare. He is touring with his work Distillation which draws on his own family ties to the peatlands of Longford, through Bord na Móna, and which playfully uses scent as a trigger into people’s relationship with the bog.

For Adam, making the workbook and spending time in the classroom is critical for his work, for nature conservation and for our shared future. “The reason that we like to talk to these age groups is because it’s great to get people interested at a young age, because then as they come up along, they study it more, they might go to college to study it, and of course they want to protect it then as well when they understand it more and they enjoy it themselves. So the idea is to teach them and as well as have the next generation protecting our boglands”.

At Corlea Trackway the children got to see the two thousand year old Iron Age wooden trackway uncovered in the bog and learn more about what it tells us about our past as well as experience the bog builder, sphagnum moss, courtesy of Noel Carberry, the OPW guide who took them out on the boardwalk.

For more you can visit Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre and meet Noel for a guided tour. It’s run by the OPW, as a historic heritage site. Close to the visitor centre you can also take a nature walk through the bogland and experience the wilderness and bird life it nourishes.