Creative Futures Academy is delighted to sponsor this one-day conference exploring how Dublin’s water bodies and urban food growing can support biodiversity and build resilience. Featuring walks, talks, conversations and commensality, the conference brings together a diverse group of participants: researchers, academics, city officials, artists, practitioners, activists, and community groups. The aim is to foster dialogue and creative exchange in an intimate, welcoming setting through panels, presentations, and guided neighborhood walks.
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The Fatima Poetry Vigilantes will recite a spoken word pieces from the audience at the beginning of every talk or presentation
9.45-10.00 Introduction – Sophie von Maltzan
10.00- 10.25 “Riverlines: How Water Shaped Dublin’s Landscape” Professor Finola O’ Kane (UCD School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy) on water’s historic imprint on Dublin’s landscape
10.25- 10.50 “Blue Threads” Les Moore (Head of Parks, Biodiversity and Landscape Services at Dublin City Council) talks about how Dublin’s waterways serve nature and the community
10.50- 11.15 “Ireland’s Hidden Blue Wealth” Professor Mary Kelly-Quinn (Freshwater Ecologist, School of Biology & Environmental Science UCD) explores Ireland’s abundant freshwater riches and the vibrant life they sustain. This lecture reveals how healthy rivers can deliver clean water, thriving wildlife, and cultural vitality—and invites you to meet some of these remarkable river creatures up close.
11.15 – 11.45 Coffee break and viewing river life through microscopes with Professor Mary Kelly- Quinn
11.45- 12.00 “Flowing Forward” Professor Finola O’Kane, Les Moore and Professor Mary Kelly‑Quinn on the Future of Dublin’s freshwaters – in conversation with Sophia Meeres
12.00- 13.00 Guided walks to different sites in Dublin 8
13.00- 14.00 Lunch by Luncheonette, served in Flanagan’s Field, a community garden adjacent to the F2 Centre
14.00- 14.35 “Water & Wildness” Eoghan Daltun (rewilding activist, farmer and author of An Irish Atlantic Rainforest)speaks about reconnecting people with nature
14.35- 15.00 “City Harvests” Maeve Foreman (Mud Island Community Garden and Community Gardens Ireland) shares her thoughts on food growing in the City
15.00- 15.30 “Cultivating the Commons” Maeve Foreman and Peadar Rice (owner of Small Changes Whole Foods Store) in conversation with Sophie von Maltzan on the potential of growing food on “underused” public land with local community- and educational- organisations
15.30- 16.00 Coffee break and introduction to the Fatima United Art Group exhibition. Inspired by the rich plant life found along the local waterways, artists from the group – working with artist Mirjam Keune – have created repeat pattern artworks for the conference.
16.00- 16.30 Artist Jennie Moran on “Midnight Marsh”, telling the story of how the reclaimed marshland which surrounds the Belgian city of Ghent is creeping back and teaching us about resilience, coexistence and hospitality.
16.30- 17.00 Artist Rosie O’Reilly “Dublin’s rivers: Hydro-storytellers of hope and renewal”
17.00- 17.10 Concluding comments
Ticket costs: €15 including lunch in Flanagan’s Field community garden, adjacent to the conference venue. Book here.
Sophie von Maltzan who organised this conference on behalf of UCD Landscape Architecture, is a socially engaged environmental artist, landscape architect, gardener and farmer. She explores how citizens can be involved in the shaping of public spaces in ways that encourage biodiverse communities of place to develop.
Professor Finola O’Kane, UCD School of Architecture, Planning & Environmental Policy, is an award winning architect, author and landscape historian. She traces how Ireland’s gardens, estates, and infrastructure reflect and shape the nation’s cultural, political and ecological life, revealing the deep connections between landscape, history, and contemporary Dublin.
Leslie Moore, the Head of Parks, Biodiversity and Landscape Services at Dublin City Council, is a Horticulturist and Landscape Architect. His team have been implementing a number of Greening Strategies in the City over the last few years which have involved the de-paving of 3 hectares of hard surfaces, the planting of hundreds of trees and plants which support biodiversity and two new parks.
Professor Mary Kelly-Quinn is a Freshwater Ecologist at the School of Biology & Environmental Science UCD. Mary’s primary research activities focus on the assessment of land-use and other human activities on the hydrochemical and ecological quality of surface waters. Her research is primarily based on streams and rivers, but she has undertaken projects on lakes, canals and constructed wetlands. She co-edited a book on Ireland Rivers in 2020.
Sophia Meeres is an engineer and landscape architect, teacher and researcher at UCD. Prior to joining academia she practised in England, Ireland and France. Sophia works and acts at the landscape scale through interdisciplinary collaborations and at the coalface of Ireland’s nature-culture reality.
Luncheonette is a nomadic long term art project centred around hospitality and food, started by Jennie Moran in the NCAD canteen in 2013. It is a prolonged exploration into the complex alchemy of placemaking, centred on the provision of shared experiences using nourishment, shelter, comfort, warmth, light, tone and spatial poetry.
Eoghan Daltun the author of “An Irish Atlantic Rainforest” is a rewilding farmer and activist on the Beara peninsula in West Cork. The now thriving native woodland serves as a model for Irish ecological restoration. His work and writing champion the power of letting nature heal itself.
Maeve Foreman is a founding member of the multi award winning Mud Island Community Garden in Dublin’s North Inner City, and a committee member of the 32 country network Community Gardens Ireland. She is also a board member of the Irish Refugee Council and her local Five Lamps Arts Festival. She has a background in community work and social work, and retired as a social work lecturer from Trinity College, Dublin in 2017.
Peadar Rice is the owner of Small Changes Wholefoods Store located on Emmet Road, Inchicore. Peadar is investigating a collaboration with St Pats Football Club, Inchicore College and Frontline to start a ‘community food growing’ area on underused public land to promote local food systems and contribute to environmental sustainability.
Jennie Moran is a visual artist whose work explores hospitality as a creative and connective philosophy. Blending sculpture, food and performance, she founded Luncheonette, an art- hospitality project at NCAD in 2013. She lectures widely, mentors in holistic hospitality and curates discursive events. She is chair of the Oxford and Dublin Gastronomy Symposium and a Getty Institute research scholar. Jennie is the author of “How to Soften Corners” and was named Best Emerging Voice at the Irish Food Writing Awards.
Fatima Poetry Vigilantes are an award-winning poetry group based in the F2 Centre in Rialto. Organized by Fatima Groups United, the group was originally mentored by Catherine Ann Cullen Inaugural poet in residence at Poetry Ireland. They won the Creative Lives Ireland Award 2023 for their fusion project “Dance Till Dán” with the Fatima Dance programme.
The Fatima United Art Group was established in 2012. The group has members from the wider Dublin 8 and 12 area. They explore different techniques and materials with artist Mirjam Keune. The repeat pattern work made for the conference exhibition has been inspired by the plant life along the local waterways.
Rosie O’Reilly is the current UCD Parity studio artist in residence and VOICE EU artist 2025. Her interdisciplinary practice is both research-driven and process-oriented, exploring how to mend connections between humans and their environment through explorative hybrid thinking.
The conference is organised by artist and landscape architect Sophie von Maltzan with support from the Creative Futures Academy, NCAD; Dublin City Council Parks, Biodiversity and Landscape Services; UCD Earth Institute and Landscape Architecture UCD.
