In 2025 Nature and Place focuses on some of the challenges of the climate crisis and how it affects our forests and landscapes.

‘Shared Terrain' by Louis Haugh is a lens-based project exploring our relationship with and experiences of public forests during a time of escalating environmental crisis. The project will engage forest users to explore their own understanding and place within the rich biodiversity of the area. During this project, recorded conversations between artist Louis Haugh and leading environmental professionals, including Dr. Quentin Crowley (TCD Centre for the Environment), will provide a contextual backdrop to people’s engagement with the project. The culmination of the project will be an archive of images, video, sound and text.

Cracking Light Productions (Maeve Stone and Alex Gill) will collaborate with composer Tom Lane and forester Bill Murphy to record interviews with a diverse range of forest users exploring their love of place, connection to nature and hopes or fears for the future. Using a unique creative process, they will transform these recordings into lyrics or rhythm by sampling voices and natural forest sounds to compose original songs reflecting the community’s emotional connection to the landscape. Using macro photography and drone footage, they will capture images of the forest’s biodiversity; these images will accompany the music as nature-based videos.

Supported by Creative Ireland dlr, dlr Arts Office and the Dublin Mountains Partnership.

Please note that the details of events listed above are provided by the relevant Local Authorities.