Sweet Futures
Artist: Sarah Browne
June 2007
Commissioned by Visualise Carlow

Taking the format of a glossy brouchure, Sweet Futures intersected several ideas - land-use, consumption, happiness, and locality - around the axis of the sugar industry both in Carlow and internationally. The 36 page publication was the end-point of a year's research by the artist and drew on a range of contributors to consider elusive notions of happiness and stability, and to illustrate the economic, social and historical forces that continue to blur the boundaries between the local and the global.

Sweet Futures was distributed free in a launch event in Fairgreen Shopping Centre, Carlow, and thereafter was available from selected locations around Carlow and nationally, as well as in PDF format from the project's website.

www.sweetfutures.org

Hedge School 06
Artist: Glenn Loughran
August - October 2006
Commissioned by County Carlow Percent-for-Art & Visualise Carlow

Hedge School began with a collaborative building event - the construction over a period of five days of a strawbale school-house in rural Carlow by a group of local participants, alongside the artist and two building specialists. This structure then facilitated a six week education programme for a group of local teenagers, delivered by the artist utilising artistic and dialogical tools and exploring issues of identity, locality, politics and ethics. The project was concluded with a public event documenting the construction of the schoolhouse building, the educational programme, and a series of animated films made by the youth group in collaboration with the artist.

The project was influenced by the artist's own educational practice and philosophies, the history of local education in the colonial era in Ireland, and the social and educational projects of the MST (Movimento Sem Terra) Landless Workers Movement in Brazil.

www.hedgeschoolproject.com