Step back in time to look at the future of Galway

UrbanLab Galway, together with Galway International Arts Festival, is calling on the people of Galway to take a step back in time and think about what the future for Galway might look like.

As part of this year’s festival, the NUI Galway based UrbanLab have invited UK artist Luke Jerram to display his work ‘Mars’ on Persse’s Plaza in Nuns’ Island.

The siting of the work on Nuns’ Island is deliberate. It is an opportunity to shift the focus to one of urban Galway’s districts of high potential.

Nuns’ Island today is a predominantly residential district, one that houses the Poor Clare’s monastery, that lends their name to the island, and with the Cathedral on the adjacent Earls Island, it is also a place of sanctuary and reflection.

This is very different to the mid-19th century Nuns’ Island; after the completion of the canal network, it was home to Galway’s beating industrial heart. Today’s quiet streets are different to the bustle of brewers, distillers and tanners that plied their trade in the shadow of the domineering city and county jail that occupied Earls Island.

“For many reasons, the future needs to be urban, we can’t continue to develop Galway in the linear east west fashion that we have done for the past 50 years,” said Dr Pat Collins of the UrbanLab and Discipline of Geography at NUIG.

“We have to look at new ways of developing the city, and one way is to explore the potential of urban quarters like Nuns Island.”

UrbanLab Galway wants to bring people down to Persse’s distillery to see it not as an old industrial ruin but as a place of enormous potential.

“In most European cities, you don’t have buildings of this scale lying empty, they have been repurposed, often for artistic, cultural and community pursuits. We are inviting festival-goers to come down and offer us their opinion on what potential futures they might see for this place,” Dr Collins said.

“It is not just this building, the focus of an UrbanLab is to consider the city and region as a whole and the potential future paths of development. We know more than we ever did about the pitfalls of environmentally insensitive development, we are all aware of the scale of the housing crisis in Ireland and across the world now. We want to hear what people’s ideas are with regard to these very pressing realities,” he added.

Luke Jerram’s Mars will run from 12noon to 10pm Thursday, July 14 to Sunday, July 17.

Workshops include a history of the Persse’s distillery, guided tours by NUI Galway scientists as well as an artist-led workshop where children ages 4 to 12 will be invited to imagine their life on Mars.

More information is available HERE