Lisa Fingleton worked with Creative Ireland over the three days of the National Ploughing Championship 2022 on the Creative Ireland Wall.  She produced a large-scale Interactive drawing project (33 metres in length) called The Future Is In The Fields which responded live to the solutions for climate change offered by farmers.  Lisa and a team (of farmers from Dingle and artists from Waterford Walls) interacted with hundreds of farmers at the event and drew their ideas onto the wall.

This project builds on her work as the embedded artist with Corca Dhuibhne Inbhuanaithe / A Creative Imagining, one of 15 projects being funded by Creative Ireland’s Creative Climate Action fund.  She is working with farmers on the Dingle Penninsula to creatively look at ways in which they can diversify to address climate change.

After the Ploughing Championships the 100  foot  wall was transported by the OPW to IMMA for the Earth Rising Festival. The wall was installed in the Garden Galleries and carried with it the traces from the fields in Laois. The marks from the rain and the soil were embedded in the wall, creating a truly organic and time specific art work. According to Lisa “It was really challenging to draw outdoors at the ploughing in the lashing rain and watch the drawing streak on the walls but now I see how relevant that is in the context of climate change. As artists we are being asked to move beyond the ego to the eco. We are being asked to respond to the climate crisis and work in collaboration with nature. This wall literally was drawn with nature herself”. 

Alongside the drawings in the Garden Galleries, Lisa also showed a short film from the ploughing championships. She has also collaborated by Badly Made Books in Cork to create a limited edition journal for those attending the workshop. She delivered a talk and a workshop on Saturday 22nd October as part of the Earth Rising Festival”.