Killybegs Community Centre Project

This pamphlet illustrates a literary response to historical and folkloric stories about Bruckless in County Donegal. Three participatory sessions were carried out with the Wednesday Group in Killybegs Day Care Centre, alongside healthcare staff and artist Áine Rose Connell, in the Summer of 2024.

Participants met together over three weeks, to collaboratively respond to the history pamphlet ‘Walking through local history’ (2014) written by Ute Daly, focused on the rich history of Bruckless. Majority of participants in the Wednesday Group in Killybegs Day Care Centre are from Bruckless, allowing rich discursive interactions to unfold when reimagining and rediscovering stories relating to the place. Through the use of collaborative poetry skills, eachother’s creative potential, interest and expression was explored.

Eleven participants and healthcare staff alongside Áine discussed, retold, read, listened and critiqued historical stories such as the Rahan Castle, once a stronghold for the Clan Suibhne in the 13th Century and the Great Bruckless Drowning in 1813, with particular reference to the local witch who then lived in the Rose Cottage. Likewise, the old Tannery that shipped high quality leather goods from Bruckless Pier in the 19th Century was reimagined, as well as and the life of Communist Thomas Roderick Fforde who lived in the Georgian Manor ‘Bruckless House’ in the early 20th Century.

This pamphlet showcases the visual processes developed by participants during the literary sessions, in which free writing prompts and the creation of visual imagery were explored. Key relevant sites around Bruckless are also visually documented. Illustrated within the writing are poems written collaboratively by the group, poems written individually, and a celebrated poem from the past.