Kavanagh Country - nominated under 'Community Arts Initiative'

1. Patrick Kavanagh Country
Pride of Place 2013
Community Arts Initiative

2. Inniskeen
Village largely unchanged since early 20th
Century
Home to Patrick Kavanagh, ‘the ploughman
poet’
Inspired by the drumlin landscape and the
everyday life of working a small farm
‘
O Monaghan hills when is writ your story
A carbon copy will unfold my being’
‘To get to know even one small field is a lifetime’s exploration’

3. Patrick Kavanagh
• Our most famous son
• Born 1904 in Mucker, Inniskeen
• Work featured many physical
locations
• Many of the sites largely unchanged
• Internationally recognised poet
– Studied on schools curriculum, north and
south
• ‘In Memory of My Mother’
• ‘Spraying the Potatoes’
• ‘Shancoduff’
• ‘The Great Hunger’
‘I cannot die, unless
I walk outside these
whitethorn hedges’

4. Our Story
• Decline of village in 1950’s with closures of
railway & mill
• Further decline in 1980’s, with outward migration
of young people and few new families
• Inniskeen Enterprise Development Group
formed, to try to reverse the decline:
– Identified tourism as offering most potential
– Identified Patrick Kavanagh as unique asset
– Secured funding to restore disused parish church
• Patrick Kavanagh Rural & Literary Resource Centre
‘I dabbled in verse, and it became my life’

5. Patrick Kavanagh Centre
• Provides central point of
contact for visitors to the
village
• Opened in 1994 by
President Mary Robinson
• Acts as a catalyst to kick
start tourism to the area,
thus providing
opportunities for local
people to develop support
businesses
The trip of iron tips on tile
Hesitated up the middle aisle
Heads that were bowed turned to see
Who could this late arrival be?

6. Activities include:
– Schools Programme
– Poetry/ writers
workshops
– Tours of Kavanagh
Country
– Annual Kavanagh
Weekend
– Inniskeen Road July
Festival
– Childrens halloween
and christmas events
– Unique concert venue

7. The Money Side
• Construction €300,000 approx
• Grant aid of 75% received for PKC
– Ex VAT, so grant covered just 54% of actual cost to
group
• The rest raised locally – over €100,000
• Operation: Costs €60,000 /year to run
– financed by:
– Admissions, Tours, Shop Sales, Events, Workshops,
Rent of facilities, Fundraising, Grant assistance

8. The Visitor Experience
• 1920’s rural Ireland – pre-mechanisation
• Local people
• Welcoming
• Authentic
• Quality
• Everyone has a part to play
Mullahinsa, Drummeril, Black Shanco-
Wherever I turn I see
In the stony grey soil of Monaghan
Dead loves that were born for me.

9. Tours of Kavanagh Country
• Guided bus tours
• Local people give
background and recitals
• Unique insight into the
work of a poet
• Walking tour also
available
Virtual Tour of Kavanagh Country
on our website,
www.patrickkavanaghcountry.com
‘Who owns them hungry hills,
That the waterhen and snipe must have forsaken.
A poet? Then by heaven he must be poor’
I hear, and is my heart not badly shaken.

10. Kavanagh Trail
• Billy Brennan’s Barn
• Drumcattan Church
• Shancoduff
• ‘The triangular field’
• Rocksavage orchard wall
• ‘Cassidy’s Hanging Hill’
• Kavanagh homestead
‘The bicycles go by in twos and threes
There’s a dance in Billy Brennan’s Barn tonight
And there’s the half-talk code of mysteries
And the wink-and-elbow language of delight’

11. • Marked 100 years since
Kavanagh’s birth
• Year-long programme
• Launched by President
McAleese
• Guests included Seamus
Heaney
• The major literary event in the
country in 2004
• Funded by the Arts Council
• All run by volunteers
Centenary Programme

12. Centenary Year 2004
•Wreath Laying
•Programme of high
profile speakers
•2 annual events
initiated:
-Royal Canal in Dublin
-Raglan Road Festival
in Inniskeen

13. Annual Patrick Kavanagh
International Poetry Competition
• Run in association with
Kavanagh Society
• International poetry
competition for unpublished
poets
– Parallel Schools Competition
– Previous winners include
Paul Durcan
• Not many community
groups can say they run an
international event – we run
two!

14. The Kavanagh Weekend
• Guest speakers, special
performances, a mix of
scholarly excellence with
Inniskeen ‘craic’
• Organised entirely by the
local committee
• Attracts Kavanagh lovers
from all over the world

15. Annual Writers workshop
Out of that childhood country what fools climb
To fight with tyrants Love and Life and Time?

16. Other Events

17. ‘Half-past eight and there is
not a spot
Upon a mile of road, no
shadow thrown
That might turn out a man or
woman, not
A footfall tapping secrecies of
stone.’

18. Inniskeen Road, July Evening Festival
•Arising from conversation at launch of Landscape Character
Assessment Report
•Huge local support
•Stewarding
•Costumes & bicycles
•Actors & set dressing
•Children demonstrated old schoolyard games
•Unprecedented access to private lands
•Billy Brennan’s Barn
•The House of the Wedding
•Shancoduff
•Praised on Pat Kenny’s radio show
‘And I was there with a knapsack sprayer
On the barrel’s edge poised’

19. 1920’s Rural Ireland Theme
Worked with Monaghan County Council & Bike
Week to refurbish old High Nelly bicycles

20. ‘My father played the
melodion outside at our gate
There were stars in the
morning east
And they danced to his music’

21. ‘And over that potato-field
A lazy veil of woven sun,
Dandelions growing on headlands,
showing
Their unloved hearts to everyone.’

22. They laughed at one I loved-
The triangular hill that hung
Under the Big Forth. They said
That I was bounded by the whitethorn hedges
Of the little farm and did not know the world.
But I knew that love's doorway to life
Is the same doorway everywhere.
...there’s a dance at
Billy Brennan’s barn
tonight

23. Conservators of Kavanagh
• Very aware of our
responsibility to conserve
Kavanagh Country
• Reference library in
Kavanagh Centre
• Assistance to owners of
Kavanagh ‘places’ regarding
their conservation and
restoration
Billy Brennan’s Barn,
restored with funding
from Heritage Council

24. Landscape Character Assessment
•Completed September 2012
•Identifies all sites featured in
Kavanagh’s work
•Assesses their current
condition
•Advises on their conservation
•Advises on enhancements to
the village
•Baseline document for
conserving Kavanagh Country

25. From Cuchulainn to Kavanagh
• Schools programme
• Explores the story of local
places
– The history behind where you live
– How local places got their names
– The landscape of south Ulster –
where the small field size and
whitethorn hedges came from
• How these fed Kavanagh’s
Sense of Place and of the
importance of the local
President Mary McAleese
launching our schools
programme in 1998

26. Where we’re going
• PKC is not a museum – it is a resource centre
which aims to inspire future works of art
• We aim to present to the visitor how various
landscapes inspire artists – including painters,
novelists and musicians
• The artist’s vision to be aided by preserving
Kavanagh Country
– Artist in residence, working the land as Kavanagh did
Now leave the check-reins slack,
The seed is flying far today -
The seed like stars against the black
Eternity of April clay.

27. Support Projects
• Community-driven
– Coffee Shop
– Pitch n Putt
– Folk Museum
– Drumcattan Church
– Fane river walk
– Monaghan Way
• To create a nucleus of ‘things to do’, in
order to attract visitors to the area
The Monaghan Way

28. The Poet’s Rest
•2 derelict cottages
•Feel of the original cottage
retained
•Open 7 days a week
•The only place in Inniskeen
which provides meals at
lunchtime
•Can cater for a full bus load
of visitors
•Used by community as a
meeting place
-Storytelling
-Card drives
Before & After

29. Folk Museum
• Former Church of Ireland
building
• Used as a folk museum
during the 80’s
• Corrugated iron roof
disintegrated
• Restored in 2007
• Cost €150,000 approx
• Funded by Peace 11
• €12.000 raised locally.
• Superb venue for exhibitions,
concerts
• Also for community use –
boxing club & scouts

30. – Another way to enjoy
Kavanagh Country
– Only waymarked way
in the county
– Inniskeen Dev heavily
involved in its
development
– Starts in Inniskeen
– Insured by Monaghan
County Council
– Featured in Irish
Independent
Monaghan Way
Illustration by
Christopher Somerville,
Irish Independent, who
chose the Monaghan
Way as his Walk of the
Week 6th
August 2011

31. The Wider Story
• Kavanagh’s high regard for ‘the power of
the Bard’
• PKC runs storytelling events
– National Telltale Day 20th
August
• Links to The Bard of Armagh
– Annual humorous verse competition
• Links through the legends of the Fianna to
the seat of the High Kings of Ulster
– Navan at Armagh

32. How we keep the show on the road
• Weekly Pick 4 LOTTO
– Run by multiple clubs – presently Inniskeen
Development Group, Blackstaff School and the
Ladies Football Club
– Proceeds go to whatever community venture needs
the help at a given time
– Provides the community with a source of funds which
enables them to respond to cases of hardship, crises
etc
– Has been running every week since 1995
– Has raised in excess of €500,000, all of which has
been invested back into the community

33. Future Plans
• Re-branding and new marketing material
– Refreshing our ‘look’, which is now 15 years old!
• Northern Ireland schools targeting
– Kavanagh recently added to their curriculum
• Upgrade Kavanagh Trail
– Information boards & lay-bys
– Podcasts
– Further walking routes through Kavanagh’s immortal
hills and whitethorn hedges
• Old drovers’ routes and ‘mass pads’

34. • Expand on the ‘sense of place’ theme
both through our exhibitions and our
events
• Develop the ‘wildlife/ countryside’
elements of Kavanagh’s poetry to fit with
the growing interest in green tourism and
biodiversity
– ‘what is life, if full of care
we have no time to stand and stare’
Upon a headland by a whinny hedge
A hare sits looking down a leaf-lapped furrow

35. • Continue village enhancement work
– Create continuous stone ditches through
village
– Preserve the 1920’s feel & restore lost
features
• Further linkages
– Brian Boru route
– Railway lines to Carrick and Dundalk
– Bellaghy Bawn centre (Seamus Heaney)
• Linking with Carrickmacross and Dundalk
to create a ‘Gateway to Kavanagh
Country’

36. • Promote an appreciation of Kavanagh locally &
assist landowners to conserve the landscape
appropriately
• Work with landowners to improve public access
to important sites
• Continue to provide assistance to private sector
to develop business opportunities
• Continue to develop events which bring people
back again and again to savour life amongst the
whitethorn hedges

38. ‘The wet leaves of the cocksfoot
Polished my boots as I
Went round by the glistening bog-holes
Lost in unthinking joy.
I'll be carrying bags to-day, I mused,
The best job at the mill
With plenty of time to talk of our loves
As we wait for the bags to fill.
Maybe Mary might call round...
And then I came to the haggard gate,
And I knew as I entered that I had come
Through fields that were part of no
earthly estate.’