Visit Donegal County Museum to view this years entrants and the short list of the Donegal Volunteer Centre and Donegal County Museum photographic competition which celebrates Volunteering in the Community.
Amateur photographers were invited to submit images of volunteers at work anywhere within County Donegal.
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 will be announced at an event in the museum during Social Inclusion Week on Tuesday 11th October at 7pm. The competition prizes are €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
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.
And is free to read here Uncover & ReDiscover Your Locality Booklet
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.
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/
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/.
