Dublin City Council's art residency with Louis Haugh brings fresh insight into city's motto

What Do Words Mean is an artwork made by Louis Haugh as part of his time as Biodiversity Artist in Residence programme in Dublin City Council.  This residency programme is funded by Creative Ireland and curated by Ruth Carroll. The work is the result of six months of artist-led engagement between the artist and the community of staff members working in the Council, which focussed on how language and its use can impact the way in which we relate to nature in the city.

Participants were invited to engage with different aspects of the interior architecture of the Council’s buildings, by imagining the scale of some of Dublin’s tallest trees within the built environment. Using specific lengths of ribbon representing individual trees’ heights, as defined by the Council’s Tree Officer, Ludovic Beaumont.

Through this exercise, they moved through and occupied the Council’s buildings in new ways, with the purpose of playing a game of word association as a closing exercise. In this game, participants were asked to respond to a list of six words; city, citizens, obedience, happy, nature and biodiversity, four of which were taken directly from Dublin City’s Latin motto Obedientia Civium Urbis Felicitas or Happy the City Where Citizens Obey. 

Collectively, a lexicon of new terminology and interpretations was generated, from which new translations of the motto are possible. Happy becomes Joyous, City becomes Land, Citizens becomes People, Obey becomes Collaborate, and so on and so forth. In this manner, infinite translations in both Irish and English become possible, which reflect the ever evolving spirit of Dublin.

In October 2025, a series of thirty six flags will be flown along the north and south banks of the river Liffey, from O’Donovan Rossa Bridge to the Millenium Bridge, highlighting some of these new translations in both languages.

Dublin City Council’s Biodiversity Artist in Residence Programme is funded by Creative Ireland, through the Creative Climate Action Fund and Dublin City Council.  These residencies aim to bring about organisational change by embedding artists in the council to facilitate a greater understanding of the value of nature in the work addressing climate change.

Image 1: Sabrina Dekker, Regional Climate Action Coordinator for the Dublin Metropolitan Climate Action Regional Office (CARO), Louis Haugh, Biodiversity Artist in Residence Dublin City Council and Lord Mayor of Dublin Councillor Ray McAdam n front of artwork What do Words Mean. 
 

ENDS