Event 1. Online
Age group: Suitable for all ages, child to adult
Author Nora Corcoran reads from her ‘Tadgh and Maranda’ series
Join author Nora Corcoran as she performs a reading from one of her children’s books celebrating Traveller heritage and culture.
“Mister, teach me to be a Tinsmith. so I can keep our Traveller Traditions alive; then my Nanna won’t be sad anymore!”. Nanna’s eyes filled with tears. Covering her red face, Maranda sighed “Ohh, Tadgh.”
Nora Corcoran is a writer of children’s fictional literature on Traveller traditions and culture, inspired by her own Irish Traveller background. The Irish Traveller (Mincéir) community are an ethnic minority with their own unique language called Cant, whose ancestors can be traced back to the 12th century in Ireland. A nomadic tribe, with traditions, a culture and heritage so different from the settled population. Nora hopes to capture the beauty of this rich culture and heritage in the pages of her children’s book “Tadgh and Maranda Meet Tom the Tinsmith”.
The Museum of Childhood Ireland is delighted to host this pre-recorded story telling event suitable for children and adults of all ages.
“Our Traveller, Mincéir children and culture have been excluded from society for far too long. Traveller community member, and author, Nora Corcoran’s books, based on Traveller Traditions and Culture should be available in every educational setting, every library, and going home in every school bag. Her books are gender balanced, and show that no matter who you are, or where you live, you are equal.”
Happy Culture Night 2022. Bain sult as! Enjoy the story reading from Nora’s Tadgh and Maranda series! Love from Nora, and all the team at the Museum of Childhood Ireland.
Twitter: @corcoran10_nora
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Event 2. Online
Age group: Suitable for Adult, 18years+
Learning from the Past: Why the History of Childhood and Youth Matters
Understanding the relationship between the past and present is increasingly complex and important. In these pre-recorded videos, researchers and practitioners reflect on why the history of childhood and youth matters and its relevance to the present day using examples from their own academic and creative projects.
When people talk about why we should study the past, a common point is that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. However, the relationship between the past and present is often more complex than this simplified warning. For Culture Night 2022, the Museum of Childhood Ireland asked researchers and practitioners at various career stages, all of whom are working on projects relating to childhood and youth, to consider the relationship between the past and the present, especially in terms of how this emerges in their own work. In these pre-recorded reflections, everyone engages with the pertinent question of why it is important to understand the history of childhood and youth and its relevance in the present day.
Dr Ida Milne: Infectious disease, child illness and death in early 20th century Ireland
Even into the 20th century, many Irish children died each year from infectious disease. During the 20th century, enormous progress was made to reduce the number of child deaths. Here, infectious disease historian Dr Ida Milne discusses the major factors which helped – antibiotics, vaccination, financial supports for the poor, and improved housing .
Ida Milne is a social historian of disease, a history lecturer at Carlow college, and a visiting research fellow at TCD Dept of History. She is chair of the History of Science, Medicine and Technology Network Ireland, and author of Stacking the Coffins, Influenza, War and Revolution in Ireland, 1918-1919 (Manchester University Press, 2020).
Megan McAuley: Why the history of childhood and youth matters…
Megan McAuley is a third-year PhD candidate in the Department of History at Maynooth University. Her thesis is entitled: ‘The Lifecycle of Rural Children in Modern Ireland: A Case Study of Birth, Life and Death in County Donegal, 1850-1950’. Her research has been supported by the MU John and Pat Hume Scholarship, NUI Denis Phelan Scholarship, and the OHAS/P&H Egan History Scholarship. Here she discusses some aspects of ‘why the history of childhood and youth matters’ in relation to her own research.
Dave Lordan: On the experience of the excluded, the marginalised child
Dave Lordan is a member of the Education Team of the Museum of Childhood Ireland and an Irish poet inspired by oral and singer-songwriter traditions and by resistance to empire, capital, and human domestication. His works have won many awards and nominations and he has been a key figure in radicalising multimedia and grassroots literature in Ireland over the past three decades. Find and follow on Spotify, Youtube, Apple Music, Amazon Music. Free books and strong opinions at www.lordanslit.com, and career overview from the University of Florence here.
Ciara Molloy: Youth Subcultures in the Republic of Ireland, 1945-85
Young people are often the subject of both censure and legal sanctions, which renders youth a valuable focus of criminological attention. In this video, drawing on her research on youth subcultures in twentieth-century Ireland, Ciara Molloy discusses how the history of youth can help us to defuse moral panics in the present. She also explores how an expansion in the definition of ‘youth’ beyond chronological age can contribute to our understanding of ageing subcultural participation.
Ciara Molloy is a PhD candidate at the Sutherland School of Law in UCD. Her work has been funded by an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship and also by a Sutherland School of Law Doctoral Scholarship. Her research examines the overlap of crime and culture in twentieth-century Ireland.
Chloe Browne: Representation, Reflection and Reminiscence: Why the History of Childhood and Youth Matters
In this video Chloe Browne, Community Engagement Lead at the Museum of Childhood Ireland, talks about the importance of representation in cultural institutions, and why it is incredibly important to engage with the history of childhood and youth in a cultural context.
Chloe Browne is an arts writer and curatorial assistant from Ireland. Currently working in the contemporary art sector, she holds a dual undergraduate degree in Art History and Italian from Trinity College Dublin and a Masters in Art History and Curatorial Practice from the University of Edinburgh. With a keen interest in social history as told through the medium of art, Chloe has a keen interest in how objects, literature and artistic media can inform a study of society both past and present. Passionate about public engagement with culture and the arts at all levels, she is delighted to be working in the realm of community engagement at the Museum to encourage a connection with the subject of childhood across Ireland and further afield.
Judy Bolger: From examining the social discourse surrounding impoverished mothers and women’s experiences of maternity and motherhood in Irish workhouses during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Judy’s focus tonight is on the children, the marginalised, pieced together from the small references she has come across of their lives.
Judy Bolger is a PhD researcher in the department of Modern Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin. Her PhD examines the social discourse surrounding impoverished mothers and women’s experiences of maternity and motherhood in Irish workhouses during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. This project is funded by the Trinity College, Dublin 1252 Postgraduate Research Scholarship. She has published works on mothers and the workhouse in Salvador Ryan (ed.), Birth and the Irish: a Miscellany (2021) and in Historical Studies, vol. 19 (2019). Her research on maternal death and the workhouse is forthcoming in an edited collection under contract with Liverpool University Press. She currently acts as the Book Review Editor for the Women’s History Association of Ireland.
Dr Beatrice Scutaru explores the importance of taking children’s own perspectives into account, especially those that transcend politics and borders. She shows how we can learn to look for complexity and richness in our analyses of the past and present, considering the current situation in Ukraine in addition to historical examples from her own research.
Dr Beatrice Scutaru is an Assistant Professor in History at Trinity College Dublin. Her main research fields are Migration, the Cold War, and Childhood. She has conducted research in three main areas: (1) East-West relations and exchanges since 1945, (2) Romanian migration to Western Europe, and (3) Child mobility and protection. Her studies have made a significant contribution to the understanding of the cooperation, exchanges, and cultural relations that took place in spite of the division and restrictions caused by the Cold War. Her current project concerns a comparative analysis of the experiences of young Romanian migrants in France and Italy.
Enjoy Culture Night 2022! Bain sult as! Love from all the team at the Museum of Childhood Ireland
Twitter: @museumofci
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/MuseumOfChildhoodIreland/
Contact organiser: Majella McAllister
mmcallister@museumofchildhood.ie
Museum email
info@museumofchildhood.ie
Phone
+353 87 681 6760
Thank you to Lorraine McEvoy, Chloe Browne, Paula Walsh and Dave Lordan, from the MoCI