Know your Locality Course for Laois
Registration for this year’s Know Your Locality Course is now open! The course will run online over 5 evenings in March, with a fieldtrip to the Rock of Dunamase at the end.
Register online with the Irish Heritage School here.
It is amazing what you can discover about your local area from the snug safety of your home.
Laois Heritage Office with the support of Creative Ireland is delighted to offer a FREE online course delivered by Irish Heritage School that will take you step-by-step through the available online sources that will allow you to paint a picture of the geological, archaeological, and historical events that happened close to where you live. While the course will look at examples from throughout Ireland, it will focus on the geology, archaeology and history of your county. As such the course is aimed toward local people who are enthusiasts of natural and cultural heritage.
Catherine Casey, Heritage Officer with Laois County Council said “We are delighted to be working with the Irish Heritage School again to bring this hugely popular course to more people with an interest in the Heritage of Laois. In recent times we have all become much more aware of the beauty and value of our own local place, and this course taps into that interest. We hope it will equip people with the tools they need to research their locality and look at their own patch with new eyes. We are really grateful for the support of Creative Ireland in Laois, which allows us to bring this course to the public for free.”
Stephen Mandal, Irish Heritage School leading a field trip at the Rock of Dunamase looking at the geology, landscape, archaeology and history as part of Know Your Locality. Supported by Creative Ireland Laois as part of the Creative Ireland Programme (2017-2022) in partnership with Laois County Council.
Picture: Alf Harvey.
The course will be delivered through five online tutorials every Tuesday and Thursday over two and a half weeks commencing March 7th 2022. We will begin by looking at the very bedrock under your feet, examining the geological processes and glacial events that shaped the landscape and formed the soils. The course then focuses on the impacts of humans on that landscape over time, from pre-history to the last century.
The first workshop includes a summary of the course content and format. A list of resources and links will be sent to the participants so that they can study their own locality. Workshops will focus on a different aspect of geology, the landscape and archaeology of Laois each week, from the formation of Ireland to the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland, with a focus on each workshop on teaching a set of online research skills. The course will also outline how these skills can be used to make your own submission to the ‘KnowYour5k’ initiative of the Heritage Council and National Museum of Ireland. Through this and other citizen scientist programmes, course participants can make a real contribution to the conservation of our heritage by recording what is in their local area, what the local community values and raising awareness of its importance.
Supported by Creative Ireland Laois as part of the Creative Ireland Programme 2017-2022 in partnership with Laois County Council.
