Communities of Culture

Communities of Culture is a Hunt Museum programme exploring the unique cultural experiences and heritages of each of Limerick’s regeneration areas – Southill, Ballinacurra Weston, Moyross and St. Mary’s Park.

Through a series of targeted community/museum based projects, Communities of Culture aims to support seven groups from these areas in expressing their unique stories. The groups are from a variety of communities. This is to ensure a wide range of perspectives and voices including young people, women, men, older people and people with disabilities.

Overview of the Project

In Phase 1 (2014) the groups produced a series of pop up exhibitions. In Phase II, they worked with a local artist to deliver two Loan Boxes, which contain rich cultural resources on different aspects of Limerick’s local history. Phases III (2018) & IV (2019) involved training community volunteers to facilitate workshops on local heritage and culture in local primary schools. This outreach service is offered on an ongoing basis.

Phase IV was designed to engage Transition Year students from regeneration areas in the production of video and other digital content relating to the Communities of Culture project and the associated local histories. Students participated in multimedia training provided by our partners Wired FM & LIR Media.tv. and collaborated with community facilitators to document their knowledge of local stories about heritage and culture.

Communities of Culture Phase V aims to develop the learning outcomes from the previous phases, and in particular the history and knowledge around local pastimes. Phase V will further build on the successful programming carried out in Phase IV with Transition Year (TY) students from local participating schools. The objective is to facilitate the development and delivery of a Communities of Culture TY Study Unit, which could be presented to primary schools.

This Unit will offer TY students unique upskilling opportunities through media and broadcasting, where they will create along with our community volunteers a range of educational online content about the wonderfully rich regeneration area’s cultural history. It is anticipated that year on year, The Communities of Culture TY Unit will engage an increasing number of students, who will work with our community volunteers to keep the regeneration area’s local history and culture alive.

Areas of Study

Local History, Community Engagement, Personal Development, ICT Skills Training

Related Learning

This project will provide Transition Year students with an opportunity to participate in a local cultural heritage project, By working independantly and as part of a team the students should gain new levels of self-confidence, this is further combined with modes of experiencial learning designed to increase their verbal, written and digital literacy skills. These skills are further transferable across a wide spectrum of academic/employment sectors, therefore helping to prepare the students for third level education or the employment market.