The County Museum Dundalk is hosting a one-day conference, ‘Reach The Future Through The Past’, on Wednesday 25 August 2010.The conference will explore the use of innovation in a heritage setting, and will examine new ways of promoting concepts of heritage and identity through the use of new technologies. The event will feature contributions from an international panel of speakers drawn from a diverse range of backgrounds, including academia, archaeology, animation, broadcasting and business.
Conference organiser, Brian Walsh explained that the conference title is inspired by a line in Paul Brady’s The Island, and the purpose of the event is to apply new ways of cultural and commercial thinking to Irish identity and to the historic Irish experience.
He continued: “Last year, the Global Irish Conference held at Farmleigh attracted representatives of the Irish diaspora and the CEOs of several multinational companies. One of the remarkable features of the conference was that the large number of CEOs who chose to attend the cultural – rather than the business - workshops. This is what gave me the idea that we should explore this theme further.”
“The purpose of our conference here in Dundalk is to find ways of seeking inspiration from the past, and to find new ways of applying and presenting this. We explored this theme ourselves earlier this year by hosting the first series of live radio webcasts by a local authority museum in Ireland. The series of hour-long webcasts focused primarily on the lives of people working in the local brewing, tobacco manufacturing and shoe manufacturing industries, as well the role and nature of education and entertainment in the Dundalk area.”, Mr. Walsh stated.
One of the main themes of the upcoming conference will be how to innovatively promote and popularise history, identity, archaeology and culture to wider audiences.
Speakers include Mary Hawkes-Green (founder, Burren College Art and Design); Brian Dolan (founder, seandalaiocht.com); Ciaran McGuinness (Archer Heritage Planning); Paul Young (co-founder Cartoon Saloon and producer of The Secret of Kells); Susan Cahill (producer of Newstalk’s Talking History programme) and Yanky Fachler (historian, business trainer, and author of ‘6 Officers, 2 Lions, and 750 Mules’).
Admission to the conference is free, but prior booking is essential. For all enquiries, please contact Brian Walsh at the County Museum, Dundalk, +353 42-9327056, Brian.Walsh@dundalktown.ie.
