Last Saturday a wonderful Citizen Science initiative, coordinated by my great friend and colleague Niall Ó Brolchain, took place at my workplace of the Insight SFI Research Centre for Data Analytics located in the Data Science Institute at the University of Galway.
To support this event, I organised an exhibition on the Bogs of Galway based on photos from Insight’s BEO project, which represents an online digital local heritage archive comprising images, videos and audios telling the story of Ireland in times past. Supported by the Galway County Council's Heritage Office and the Galway Education Centre, this material has been collected over the years in collaboration with schools and community groups. Also on display were old sods of turf from our own family bog (sold many years ago to the Irish government for conservation purposes), an enamel (metal) mug used for the much needed cup of tea during breaktime on the bog, and the Slane (Irish = Sléan), the traditional implement used in Ireland for the cutting of the peat.
Hopefully these photos and items will bring back many happy childhood memories to people of my vintage of long hot summer days working in the bog with family cousins and neighbours!
The exhibition also highlighted the new role of peatlands in the 21st century in tackling the interconnected global climate and biodiversity crises and the importance in restorating them to serve as the largest of land-based natural carbon sinks.
Most of the photos in this montage are decades old and were originally black and white before I colourised them.
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