Dublin City Council launches love letter to Dublin’s rivers

Dublin City Council is delighted to announce a new research project that takes the form of a walking trail through the city-centre.  

Abhainn by Rosie O’Reilly is being hosted on the Dublin Discovery Trails app. It consists of 7 distinct episodes that create a love letter to Dublin’s rivers, to the life they hold and make possible and the people who care for them.   

Curated by Ruth Carroll, Abhainn views Dublin through its inseparable relationship to water and its rivers. Abhainn is available as a digital version and also as an analogue version with episodes on cassette. It came from the first biodiversity artist in residence programme in Dublin City Council.   

As the origin of all life, water provides us (humans and more than human) with everything we need. Without it there would be nothing. In Dublin, this couldn’t be more true.  A coastal city and a port, it grew around dozens of rivers with many miles sent underground so human settlement could spread.

In her book Wanderlust (2001) Rebecca Solnit tells us that “walking shares with making and working that crucial element of engagement of the body and the mind with the world, of knowing the world through the body and the body through the world”. 

Abhainn will take its participants on a unique journey through the city of Dublin, a journey through both liminal and covert places, their stories woven together to create a walk through the city though a distinct hydro-lens. Abhainn asks what happens when we shift the focus and talk about the city through its water and hydrological systems? What can water and the rivers and their inhabitants teach us when we acknowledge water is the continuum that holds the city together? 

Abhainn grew slowly within the Council through a series of conversations, findings and encounters, research within the city in the areas of flood defence, river maintenance, biodiversity and parks, the city archive and a public call out for wider community stories.  Through interviews, field recording, texts and sound responses, this series of water-walks have been composed with musician Colm O’Cíosóig to tell Dublin’s hydro story. Photography for Abhainn was by Sean Breithaupt. 

This project is funded by Creative Ireland, through the Creative Climate Action Fund and Dublin City Council.  The Dublin Discovery Trails app was initially developed by PeelX in partnership with Dublin City Council and Failte Ireland. 

Abhainn is free to download through the Dublin Discovery Trails app and is a walking trail of 9km with 7 distinct episodes.