What can Irish Design do for Tourism?

In the last of her series on the Year of Irish Design and its importance for tourism, Aileesh Carew writes about the initiative’s flagship exhibition Liminal - Irish design at the threshold. 

As the year-long programme for Irish Design 2015 comes to a close, it is with great pride that I write this month about the initiative’s flagship exhibition Liminal - Irish design at the threshold, running at The Coach House at Dublin Castle until the end of December. If you miss it, you can catch it at the National Craft Gallery in Kilkenny from April 2016.

The exhibition presents a selection of Ireland’s most exciting design thinking and practice, with work developed collaboratively between designers working across disciplines. What is really interesting is the designers’ ability to transcend these disciplinary boundaries to address the issues of today and to meet the design challenges of tomorrow.

With my tourism hat on, the piece in the exhibition that I am immediately drawn to is The Souvenir Project. This is a collection of objects, curated by Makers & Brothers, that seeks to revitalise the notion of a what a souvenir can be, moving away from negative associations with mass tourism and mass production.  It’s also an opportunity to show visitors to this country the truly extraordinary creative talent and quality of materials and making on offer.

Infamously, The Irish Farmer’s Journal published a letter in 1973 wherein a ‘disgusted teenager’ decried the fact that a souvenir she bought in Ireland was in fact manufactured in Japan. In a country with such a rich heritage of craft and workmanship, The Souvenir Project comes at a timely moment when a sense of place is being re-instilled into Irish produce.
The project includes nine souvenirs in total; the following are three of my favourites:

• Designed by Johnny Kelly and made by Nicholas Moss, The Rainbow Plate acknowledges and celebrates a defining moment in Ireland’s history: the legislation of same-sex marriage on 22 May 2015. The rainbow pattern on this beautiful plate is reconstructed entirely from the Nicholas Mosse Pottery’s archive of motifs, including elements dating back to the 1970s when the pottery was first established.

• Maybe not everyone would like to be reminded of the rain in Ireland, but it is what makes our countryside so beautifully green. Naming Rain, designed by Scott Burnett and made by J. Hill’s Standard, is a gorgeous crystal vase with the nature of rain interpreted through cuts on crystal.

• The Lumper… what IS a lumper? I had never heard the word before but this souvenir is so covetable – a beautiful piece of bronze that begs to be picked up and cradled in your palm and would adorn any desk or bookshelf. Designed by Makers & Brothers and made by Bronze Art Fine Art Foundry, Lumper is a memento with a wonderfully curious form. And I now know that this humble root vegetable was introduced into Europe in the 16th century and has since become uniquely associated with Ireland. Once the most prevelant food source in the country, it is now grown on only one farm. Wouldn’t that be an interesting item to have on a menu?

Unlike the mass produced mementos often sold around the country which present a kitsch image of Ireland that’s more Darby O’Gill than current, these beautiful souvenirs capture something of a place that is central to its identity. The Souvenir Project in its entirety can be seen at the Liminal exhibition (Lumper is presented with an essay by Darina Allen) and some are for sale at makersandbrothers.com

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* ID2015 is delighted that the inaugural Irish Tourism Industry Awards have included a special award to highlight good design in Tourism. For more information http://www.irishtourismindustryawards.ie/categories/

* Irish Design 2015 partners include Founding Partner - MCO Projects; Accommodation Partner - The Doyle Collection; Venue Partner - OPW; Exhibition Partners – DAA. Technology Partner - IBM

An overview of the core programme of events can be found at www.irishdesign2015.ie 

Aileesh Carew is the Tourism Advisor for Irish Design 2015. Her role is to provide advice and management of the tourism programme for the year of Irish design 2015, to communicate and animate interest in the Year of Design – nationally & internationally - and engage with tourism industry partners to raise awareness for Irish Design 2015. She has spent most of her career managing hotels, most recently opening Ballyfin Demesne in Co Laois, putting it on the international map as one of the best small hotels in Europe. A graduate of Shannon College of Hotel Management, with an MBA from Copenhagen Business School and Business Management Coaching from Scandinavian Leadership, she loves to travel, read cookery books, occasionally cooking from them, eat out and spend time with her family.