UCC CREATIVE & UCC Environmental Research Institute
DANCE ARTIST / PLANT SCIENCE RESIDENCIES
Glenkeen Gardens, West Cork
2023
In collaboration with the Crespo Foundation & Dance Cork Firkin Crane.

UCC Creative is an initiative to develop and advocate for creative practice at UCC in lively collaboration with local, national and international communities, festivals and creative / cultural industries. UCC Creative Events include public art commissions, workshops, showcases and residencies.
The UCC Environmental Research Institute hosts over 450 researchers across 25 schools and 6 research centres within the University. Their mission is to generate new research knowledge for the understanding and protection of our natural environment, and develop technologies, tools, services and policy knowledge to facilitate a transformation to a zero carbon, resource efficient, and sustainable society.
For 2022 / 2023 UCC Creative has partnered with the Environmental Research Institute, the Crespo Foundation (Frankfurt) and Dance Cork Firkin Crane to develop two pilot residencies for Irish / Irish-based dance artists in collaboration with plant scientists from UCC in response to Glenkeen Garden in West Cork.
The Crespo Foundation is a charitable foundation that supports artists and arts institutions and carries our operational projects in the fields of art, education and social affairs.
Dance Cork Firkin Crane specialises in supporting dance artists, presenting dance performances and encouraging people in Cork to engage with dance of all kinds.
We are delighted to announce that the two successful Dance Artists for this pilot residency programme are: Gráinne O’Carroll and Isabella Oberländer.


Further Information:
The stunning cultivated and wild gardens at Glenkeen in West Cork (owned by the Crespo Foundation) provide the botanical context / coastal environment for these pilot residencies bringing together the embodied intelligence of dance artists with the research of plant scientists at UCC. A joint initiative of UCC Creative and the Environmental Research Institute in collaboration with the Crespo Foundation and Dance Cork Firkin Crane, this is a distinctive opportunity to develop R&D for an art-science partnership.
These residencies 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. This is a pilot project, and residencies will focus on developing the collaborative partnership through initial research and development.