Dance Artist / Plant Scientist Residency

UCC Creative is partnering with Dance Cork Firkin Crane, the Environmental Research Institute, and the Crespo Foundation (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) to develop two pilot residencies for Irish / Irish-based dance artists in collaboration with plant scientists from University College Cork in response to Glenkeen Garden in West Cork.

The stunning cultivated and wild gardens at Glenkeen (owned by Crespo Foundation) provide the botanical context / coastal environment for the pilot residencies, bringing together the embodied intelligence of dance artists with the research of plant scientists at UCC. This is a distinctive opportunity to develop R&D for an art-science partnership.

Following a competitive open call in 2022, dance artists Grainne O Carroll and Isabella Oberländer were selected to take part in the project. The residencies, which took place in January / February and again in June, place the intelligence of dance artists as creative researchers, somatic adventurers and performers into a lively collaborative partnership with plant scientists to develop projects in the context of a coastal garden. Both artists will present the results of their work in Cork in 2023.