What is a civic, public, space in Galway? Is it a publicly owned land or building where people can assemble and meet or in today’s society does it only mean pubs and shopping centres which are privately owned and run for profit? What about those with disabilities, how do they experience Galway city?
These questions will be looked at in a new programme of lectures, readings, and writing workshops to be run by Mary O’Malley - the highly regarded Galway based poet, who is currently the Writer-in-Residence at NUI, Galway - entitled What Goes Around Comes Around.
Living in the city
Ms O’Malley was appointed Writer-in-Residence in November 2007 and will hold the post until November next year. As part of the position, she teaches the poetry module in the MA in literature and creative writing and also gets time to work on her next collection of poems.
The post also requires an engagement with the wider public and for this, Ms O’Malley has designed a course which she hopes will provoke a wide ranging discussion on civic and public spaces in the city - how they are used, if there are enough, and related planning issues.
What Goes Around Comes Around will also involves Ms O’Malley writing a series of articles on the programme theme for the Galway Advertiser.
The key points of Ms O’Malley’s programme will be - How well do you know your city? Are there enough proper public spaces for the public to use which are publicly owned and free? How do we make sense of the “rampant building” which has taken place in Galway city over the last 15 year?
“The authorities have a responsibility to provide us - the citizens of Galway city - with civic and public spaces that the public have access to - parks, playgrounds, assembly areas, areas for public art, and municipal buildings,” Ms O’Malley tells me as we sit in her office in NUIG for the interview.
She also points out that shopping centres, bars, restaurants, and swimming pools are also ‘public spaces’.
“They are also places where the public can meet and interact,” she says, “but they are also privately owned and run for profit. These seem to be the only public spaces we are being given today. It seems to be what the planners have decreed. As such I think this discussion is timely as I think people are ready to look at what kind of city they want.”
The course was already drafted when Ms O’Malley fractured a knee-cap that left her incapacitated for four weeks and on crutches for the last eight weeks. It will be another month before she is off the crutches.
The experience has been an eye opener for the writer as it has altered both her view of the city and ideas of what ‘civic space’ means.
“I didn’t realise how helpless you are on crutches,” she says. “Here on the streets of rainy Galway you are taking your life in your hands if you are on them. Galway is very, very, ill-equipped for disabled people. The surfaces are terrible and it’s also brought home to me the lack of municipal facilities. If you don’t use a pub or restaurant where do you go to go to the toilet? The public toilets in Eyre Square are the only public toilets I know in the city centre. Where are the seats if you want to sit down? It’s things like that.”
Exploring Galway and the experience of living in the city will be central to the articles Ms O’Malley will write for the Galway Advertiser.
“I’m from Connemara originally and have lived in the city on and off over the years,” she says. “I now live in a suburb on the west of the city but I realised there were parts of the city I didn’t know so I decided to take four journeys and write about what I see, find, and experience, with no preconceptions. I will be like a tourist.”
These walks will involve Ms O’Malley walking around the city at night, “when people are spilling out from the nightclubs - I want to see if the horror stories are true; around various housing estates; places she has been since her accident; and the fourth is as yet unplanned.
“I hope the articles will give people a different view of the city and give them a chance, as citizens, to consider their own notion of the town.”
What goes around comes round
What Goes Around Comes Around begins next month. The public lectures and readings will take place in the Siobhán McKenna Theatre, Arts Millennium Building, NUI, Galway. All start at 8pm.
The discussions on civic space lectures begin on October 7 with artist Aideen Barry discussing public art; Geographer Valerie Ledwith on social geography on October 14; film maker Dermot Summers exploring the idea of ‘wilderness and the city’ on October 21; and philosopher Miles Kennedy examining Gaston Bachelard’s ‘poetics of space’ on October 21.
“The talks are aspirational,” says Ms O’Malley, “in that I hope people from different backgrounds - planners, community groups, everybody - can meet on safe ground, and if they are interested continue this discussion themselves and hopefully some new ideas on these issues can emerge, and hopefully be implemented.”
The poetry readings will be from Maurice Riordan (October 16 ), Sinead Morrissey (October 23 ), Peter Sirr (October 30 ), and Mary O’Malley and Marina Carr (November 6 ).
The writing workshops take place on October 1, 8, 22, and 29 and November 5, 12, and 19 at 7pm in the Arts Millennium Building, Room AM 104, NUIG. The workshops’ theme is; how you got here, where you came from, whatyou found when you arrived. As such the organisers are particularly interested in immigrants and also Irish people from outside Galway taking part.
For more information about the programme and to attend the lectures, readings, and workshops, contact 091 - 495610.
