NCAD Gallery, Harry Clarke Building, 100 Thomas St. D08 K521

Thursday, 19 March, 4.30pm

Open to all, no prior registration required

FIELD Guide will be launched by Dr. Marcus Collier, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science, Trinity College Dublin and Principal Investigator on the NovelEco project.

Sitting beside the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, the FIELD is a 0.4 hectare site whose use and definition has shifted over the last decade: from a derelict urban car park to a guerrilla-composted horticultural project; and, more recently, to a semi-structured biodiverse haven for human and more-than-human interaction, creative research, and learning.

FIELD Guide — A Terrestrial Lexicon & Multispecies Index introduces the FIELD as an urban novel ecology, hosting webs of life born out of hybrid patterns of human and non-human use and inhabitation. FIELD Guide has been developed through contributions from learners on the Creative Futures Academy’s Professional Certificate in Art & Ecology offered by NCAD. It was compiled over two days in the summer and autumn of 2023 by learners on the course, overseen by Dr. Marcus Collier of Trinity College Dublin and Dr. Lorraine Archer of Central St Martins, London.

Over the last two years, across four seasonal ‘intensives’, learners on the Professional Certificate have engaged with the FIELD as a site of outdoor learning, reflecting on how we might collectively ‘reworld’ our relationships with more-than-human ecologies.

A core part of the publication is the Multispecies Index, a non-exhaustive catalogue of life in the FIELD, divided into the three kingdoms of Plantae, Animalia and Fungi. It records the web of complex life in the FIELD and offers a snapshot of its biological diversity at a particular point  in time.  As such, the Multispecies Index  serves both as a baseline reference for future research and enquiry, as well as an invitation to consider how we can create theconditions to ensure that all species listed – and more besides – might flourish in this perpetually evolving novel ecology.

Editors: Gareth Kennedy and Seoidín O’Sullivan

Design: Dervla Clarke, POND Studios

FIELD Guide — A Terrestrial Lexicon & Multispecies Index is published within the framework of ‘Museum of the Commons‘ a four-year project organised by the European confederation L’Internationale and co-financed by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union. Gareth Kennedy and Seoidín O’Sullivan were Urban Fields residencies as part of Museum of the Commons.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.