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Museum Projects

Over the years, Donegal County Museum has participated in various local, national and International projects.

 

Some of our most recent projects include:

Digital Action on Climate Change with Heritage Environments (DACCHE)

 

Climate change presents a clear and present danger to the culture, heritage and life of communities in the NPA region. Heritage organisations are key actors in climate dialogue, motivating communities and visitors through awareness and action. Digital Action on Climate Change with Heritage Environments (DACCHE) facilitates the use of local knowledge and equips communities to preserve cultural landscapes, with digital solutions and methods for communication of climate stories, and actionable strategies for land restoration, instilling advocacy in the face of a rapidly changing environment.

Cultural landscapes combine works of both nature and humankind,  and are home to communities and their heritage. Landscapes, archaeological sites, artefacts, and intangible practice threaten human legacy through temperature variance, rising sea levels, and extreme weather conditions.

 

Local capacity is strongest when given tools and pathways for democratised agency. The development of frameworks, toolkits and solutions to elevate community voices through citizen science monitoring of heritage sites leverages knowledge exchange to contribute to equitable action for sustainable land management. Generation of simulated climate futures using state of the art emergent technologies and rich exhibiting to communicate climate stories invigorates new audiences to action. Enthusiasm is harnessed through land restoration and ecosystem management, feeding back into investment in the landscape, climate impacts, and positive mitigation.

 

DACCHE investigates how organisations can leverage emergent technologies to build local capacity for climate change adaptation, risk prevention and disaster resilience. By leveraging community knowledge and approaching new challenges from the perspective of “learning through heritage” we motivate and enable tourists, youth, local people and authorities to inspire behavioural changes for societal and environmental benefits, progressing to global net zero.

 

Partners/Partnership:

Jamtli Foundation, Sweden

Aurora Borealis, Norway

Gunnar Gunnarsson Institute, Iceland

University of Iceland, Iceland

Donegal County Museum, Ireland

Faroe Islands National Museum, Faroe Islands

Nordic Centre of Heritage Learning & Creativity, Sweden

 

Projektet pågår/Duration:

July 2023–June 2026

 

Budget:

The total project budget is 1.448.871,57 EUR of which 584.285,78 EUR from EU funds.

 

With financial support from the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme (Interreg NPA) and Region Jämtland Härjedalen.

 

For new updates about DACCHE, please visit https://linktr.ee/dacche_interreg

 

För mer information kontakta/ For more information, contact Kevin Denham:

[email protected]

+46 (0)76-133 61 55

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donegal Volunteer Centre & Donegal County Museum Volunteering in the Community Photography Competition & Exhibition 2022 – €600 PRIZE FUND 

 

 

Volunteering In The Community and Volunteering in Heritage Photographic Exhibition 

 

Amateur photographers were invited to submit images of volunteers at work anywhere within County Donegal, . which celebrates Volunteering in the Community.

Donegal County Museum created the ‘Volunteering in Heritage - the John McDermott Memorial Award’, to recognise and highlight the extraordinary contribution that volunteers within local museums, heritage centres and organisations make to Donegal’s history and heritage. This award was created in memory of the late John McDermott, who as a volunteer, over many years, took hundreds of photographs of archaeological and historic sites across County Donegal.

 Admission Free

The winners were announced at an event in the museum during Social Inclusion Week on Tuesday 11th October at 7pm.  The competition prizes were €400 Shop LK voucher for the overall winner and there are two €50 runners up vouchers. The prize for ‘’Volunteering in Heritage- the John McDermott Memorial Award’’ is a €100 voucher for Magee’s Photo Lab.

 

Further information Donegal Volunteer Centre 074 9126740 County Museum 074 9124613

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

UnCover & ReDiscover Your Locality' Project

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Donegal County Museum and the Donegal Volunteer Centre invited  Donegal People for contributions - a short article or photographs on what  they  uncovered or even rediscovered about their locality in County Donegal. We received funding to publish this booklet from the The ‘KEEP WELL’ campaign, Healthy Ireland an Healthy Ireland  initiative of the Government of Ireland with funding from the Healthy Ireland Fund.

 

T‌he booklet is now available for free from Donegal County Museum, Libaries  around the county and the Donegal Volunteer Centre.

 And is free to read here Uncover & ReDiscover Your Locality Booklet

 

 

Connected Culture and Natural Heritage in a Northern Environment (CINE)

 

Between 2017 and 2020 the Museum was involved with the CINE project, a collaborative digital heritage project between partners from Norway, Iceland, Ireland and Scotland and funded by the Northern and Arctic Periphery Programme (ERDF).  The partners in Ireland were Donegal County Museum and Ulster University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Intelligent Systems. The aim of the CINE project was to transform people’s experiences of heritage through technology. Using new digital interfaces such as augmented reality, virtual world technology, and easy to use apps the project aimed to enable communities to preserve and promote their heritage and bring the past alive. Behind the scenes the CINE project developed toolkits to help remote and sparsely populated areas preserve and present their cultural and natural heritage in innovative ways. 

 

In Donegal, Donegal County Museum and Ulster University worked with two communities – Killybegs and Inch Island. We delivered workshops on photogrammetry and the creation of simple 360 videos. Then using research gathered by the Killybegs History and Heritage group we developed a new website www.virtualstcatherines.net which allows people to visualise the built heritage of St Catherine’s Church and graveyard in Killybegs from a new perspective. 

 

 

During 2020, our facilitator Guy Barriscale worked with the community of Inch Island, to gather stories, images and artefacts relating to the history of the island. 

Using the material collected we created www.inchheritage.org a virtual exhibition which showcases the history and heritage of Inch Island.

 

 

 

Following this case study a Community Coproduction Best Practice manual was created entitled Meitheal http://coproductionguide.com/ 

 

 

Finally, to bring all of our  work on the CINE project together in one place, the partners developed www.cinecommunities.org 

which provides a series of ‘getting started’, guides for a range of digital tools to assist communities in creating and presenting their heritage.  

 

 

Re-imagine Project with the Irish Architectural Foundation

 

In 2019 and 2020 the Museum collaborated with An Grianan Theatre and the Regional Culture Centre (RCC) in Letterkenny on Reimagine, an Irish Architecture Foundation project, supported by the Creative Ireland Programme’s National Creativity Fund.  Reimagine is a community-led architecture and design programme, which brings together local communities, architects, designers and planners to develop projects which will enhance the local built environment. As part of Reimagine Letterkenny, the cultural partners worked with Pasparakis Friel Architects, to design and install temporary signage and way finding markers to promote the physical linkage between the Museum, the Theatre and the RCC.  Pasparakis Friel  have also developed the concept of a cultural quarter linking these buildings which could form part of the master planning process for Letterkenny funded through the Urban Regeneration and Development Fund.

 

For more information:

https://www.facebook.com/LKCD-Letterkenny-Cultural-District-102305154719376/

 

https://www.lkcd.ie/

 

 

The ‘Reimagine…’ project is supported by the Creative Ireland Programme’s National Creativity Fund.
For further information on Reimagine…, visit: https://architecturefoundation.ie/news/reimagine/.