The Bloom Fringe Team becomes the Green Edge Team and there are exciting times ahead
The differences and similarities between what a place is and what changes city spaces have intrigued and inspired us as designers for many years. As Jan Gehl, the renowned public space expert once said, “If you design for cars you get cars, while if you design for people you will get people”.
Our response as city dwellers has been to create events to green our concreted spaces and bring people into these spaces, to turn them into places in which to linger and make memories afterward. It has been an incredible journey and we have made tons of friends since our first gig in 2014. Our work explores the power of temporary use to showcase change and how we can make cities more liveable.
BIG NEWS
We don’t like to stay still for too long so we are now taking the opportunity through Horticulture Connected to announce some big changes. First up, we are moving our festival to September. We will have more time now to nail our 2018 programme. Next thing is a name change; we are now called Green Edge.
These decisions were not taken lightly – Bloom Fringe has been such a rewarding project to work on for all three of us – Róisín de Buitléar, Esther Gerrard and myself Marion Keogh. We feel a weight has been lifted with these changes, and that the hustle for sponsorship and press coverage will be less competitive now.
LEGACY
We work solidly on the festival every year for about 12 weeks and the projects that stay on the streets afterward that
“While passion doesn’t pay the bills it does fuel us”
turn it into a legacy. 2014 had green wall panels activating the laneways, 2015 saw the Thornton’s skip seats popping up all around the city and around the country. 2016 had a willow woven castle sculpture which was left in Dublin Castle for the summer. In 2017, our flowery wheelbarrows and timber planters were moved from Wolfe Tone Square to a neighbouring piece of pathway on Wolfe Tone Street as a small greening project. Ensuring community champions are supported and projects are implemented takes time, and we hope to achieve many more lasting legacy projects with Green Edge.
SUPPORT
We have always maintained a hard line on where our financial support comes from. Our principal sponsor has been Dublin City Council, with partners and supporters such as Fáilte Ireland, OPW at Dublin Castle, Sanctuary Synthetics, Mulch, and Powerscourt Townhouse helping us out. It’s not always money that comes our way but stuff too – old wheelbarrows, artificial grass, fabric offcuts, plants, chairs, coffee, food, all donated to us in exchange for a Tweet or a Facebook meme and a place on our map and a feature in our films. Our map, designed by Fuchsia MacAree, is distributed to 10,000 Dubliners and visitors. It’s a pull-out colourful funky guide to the community gardens, secret gardens, retailers and coffee shops that are all taking part in the festival.
THE MONEY
A few years ago a drinks company showed interest in giving us some money. We didn’t pursue it because we felt our pop-up places could become beer gardens promoting the sponsor rather than us and our ethos. By having public money as our principal funding source, we can stay true to ourselves and to our objectives rather than becoming corporate and pandering to marketing demands.
Even though ours is generally a pop-up festival working with volunteers, there are still overheads and bills to be paid. In year one we put in our own money to make the festival happen. We also got a huge amount of free stuff from some key players and without them Bloom Fringe would never have taken place. The following years we did receive funding but we only gave ourselves (Esther, Róisín and myself) a pay cheque in 2017, the fourth year. The festival only runs for a weekend, but all three of us start working on it part-time in February, then full-time for most of April and all of May.
While passion doesn’t pay the bills, it does fuel us. And our passion is infectious. That’s how we get more and more people to take part with us every year. Everyone can see how powerful it is to plant in the city where there is so much concrete and tarmac – flowers, trees, herbs, vegetables – and they just want to be a part of this great festival.
THE PROJECTS – LIFE AFTER THE FESTIVAL
Our projects always have an element of fun and intrigue to them. Like our flipping tree wall in December and January 2016-17 as part of the New Year’s Eve festival with Fáilte Ireland. We installed a 7m long timber wall on the railings at St Stephen’s Green for a month with flipping doors painted different colours. We stood on the street for a few hours every day flipping the flaps open, and then passers-by did the same. If you flipped the flaps one way you’d see painted trees in winter and the opposite direction revealed them with their leaves on in summer. You could flip them in a pattern and “write” your name on the wall. It was educational as well as fun, and people didn’t realise they were also learning about trees growing in the Green a few meters away.
THE WORKSHOPS
Our bug hotel making workshops for kids in Body and Soul, Electric Picnic and St Patrick’s festivals have been loads of fun for us too. We love showing kids how to fill a wooden box with natural materials like seed heads and cones, straw and cardboard and chatting to them about all the insects that will live in there for the winter – a hotel for bugs – they get so creative with their little constructions. They’re learning all about sustainability and environmental awareness in a relaxed way that it has a real effect on them. It’s also a great way to get kids dirty and to handle worms and other insects.
THE FUN
Our Mud / Dino Park in Wolfe Tone Square was a huge success in the filthy dirty stakes! Kids in their Sunday best hunkered down in the sunshine to play with toy dinosaurs, pouring water from little watering cans into a constructed bed of soil. The water kept flowing and the soil got muckier and smiles got bigger and the mammies kept chatting and the coffee kept flowing. It was such a great thing to see. We have taken this model to Kilkenny for the Savour Kilkenny food festival, and with the School of Food, we got kids to make vegetable monsters out of new veg varieties being grown in Ireland.
GREEN EDGE – THE SAME THING REALLY
We’re not re-inventing the wheel here. We have gone from strength to strength every year and we want to up our game so we are moving to September. It’s a good time of year to take stock from a gardening perspective, to plan for the winter and following year, to appreciate the harvest and bounty of the summer. We are very excited our Green Edge “happening” this coming September will be a permanent fixture in the horticultural calendar. Our focus will be on exploring the city through walking and connecting it like a “green necklace”, in homage to Michel de Certeau’s statement: “Walking is to the city as speech is to language, making it legible and accessible”.
CALL TO ACTION – WE NEED YOU
We are calling out to anyone interested in getting involved to run an event, an installation or intervention in Dublin city, or to anyone who has an appropriate product or business they want to promote. We want to talk to businesses who are interested in giving us financial support or other inventive types of support – old broken rusty wheelbarrows were a huge help in 2017! We need people too as volunteers – get in touch if you want to help on the day or in the lead-up.
We are also looking for community greening projects to get involved – community gardens, communal growing spaces or initiatives. Let us know who you are so we can include you on our map. Get in touch with us today via 087 813 7718 or greenedgedublin@gmail.com. ✽
“Walking is to the city as speech is to language, making it legible and accessible”
BLOOMFRINGE was founded by Landscape Architect and project manager Esther Gerrard, award-winning garden designer Marion Keogh and glasswork artist Róisín de Buitléar (creative director). Photo: Beta Bejgart |
