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Tirboy Traditional Traveller Skills Project, Tuam
The art of tinsmithing used to be a key feature of traveller culture. Travellers traditionally moved from place to place, making and repairing artefacts from tin and copper as they went. In an era where resources were scarce and valuable these skills were highly valued. Nowadays, however, they have all but disappeared.
Per-cent-for-art funding from remedial works at the Tirboy estate in Tuam, built in the fifties to house travellers, is currently being used to provide a series of workshops in the art of working with tin and copper. Given by master craftsmen and elders of the travelling community Eddie Sweeney and Martin Ward, the aim of the project is to pass these skills on to the younger travellers, to revitalise and revalue their use, and to encourage the development of these skills in an artistic context.
The project, which began in late October, will run until mid-December, has attracted huge interest from the settled traveller community in Tuam. An exhibition of some of the resulting work is planned for Tuam library, and another for the Galway Arts Centre, early in 2009.
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