Brilliant Resilience Project Fermanagh

Rural Housing Association and Community Arts Partnership’s Brilliant Resilience project, funded through The Prince’s Countryside Fund, runs across County Fermanagh with the aim of building resilience during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic. Building on existing traditional skills and interests, stories and heritage specific to this rural community, the project creates space for conversation, supports creative activity specific to Fermanagh’s rural culture and builds capacity for social enterprise to ensure sustainability beyond the life of the project

This project will deliver creative capacity building workshops in order to maximise resilience of participants and their communities. Through the medium of storytelling, crochet and photography participants will document the resilience of countryside life during lockdown, reflect on past times and hopes for the future.

The project focuses on three phases, with participants welcome to participate in all options or choose elements which are of specific interest to them.

Phase 1: Creativity under lockdown

Over the summer we will be hosting a series of socially distanced storytelling classes where we explore the heritage and past of rural Fermanagh, life during lockdown and the hopes we have as we emerge from the pandemic.  These stories will feature as part of a coffee-table book. This is a great opportunity to meet someone new in your local area and have a chit chat!

The project will also explore the landscape of Fermanagh through a series of socially distanced outdoor photography classes led by Belfast Exposed. If you don’t have the equipment already, we’ll loan you a camera. Images from this project will feature in a community exhibition in Autumn 2021.

Phase 2: Creativity when safe to gather in-person

Would you like a professional photo portrait taken of you or your family from a safe social distance, either at your doorstep or garden? If so, you will receive a copy of your photo in a handmade frame created by the Men’s Shed programme. Photos may feature in a book or local exhibition documenting the project; however, you can still receive the free framed photo even if you don’t wish for your photo to be in the exhibition.

Phase 3: Creativity on display

At the end of the project, we will produce a calendar, coffee table book and a small exhibition of what life was like during lockdown and Covid-19.

If you would like to find out more about this project contact: rmontgomery@ruralhousing.co.uk