Voices From the Field / Guthanna ón nGort by Lisa Fingleton is a film which gives a powerful insight into the communities that work on the Dingle Peninsula (County Kerry) to rear animals and grow produce so that our wider society may be fed and nourished. With humour, diligence, and passion the ten farming families provide an urgent overview of the real-time consequences of climate change affecting our local ecosystems and our lives today.

Lisa Fingleton was the embedded artist with Corca Dhuibhne Inbhuanaithe / A Creative Imagining, one of 15 pilot projects funded by the Creative Climate Action Fund. She worked in partnership with the Dingle Hub, Green Arts Initiative of Ireland and Marei Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine Research and Innovation to creatively look at ways in which farmers can respond to climate change.

The resulting collaborative film was co-created with the farm families as a way of not only marking their stories and experiences but enabling a wider audience to hopefully reconnect and learn about the land and the types of farming the families are engaged in. The farmers also reflect on their learning from this project, their concerns about climate change and their ideas for the future.

Contributors

Eibhlín Uí Chíobháin, Seamus O’Cíobhaín, Lís Uí Chíobháin,
Nora Greaney, Tom Greaney, Joe Kelliher, Padraig O’Dowd,
Sharon Ní Shúilleabháin, Sinead Ní Dhubhda,
John Joe Fitzgerald, Teresa (Tess) Fitzgerald, Niamh Foley,
Sandra O’Dowd, Michael O’Dowd, Sean Kennedy
Aidan O’Connor, Jackie Bowler, Eryn O’Connor
Daragh O’Connor, Siobháin Prendergast
Tony O’Sé,  Rebecca Ní Shé
Artist / Director: Lisa Fingleton
Camera: Chris Garrett
Editor / Colorist: Clint Fitzgerald
Music: Clint Fitzgerald
Translation: Simon Ó Faoláin
Subtitles: John Kennedy

Lisa Fingleton is an artist, filmmaker, writer and grower who has spent over twenty years cultivating deep-rooted connections between art, food and farming. Her projects incorporate socially engaged, collaborative and performative process; participatory moving image; large scale drawing installations; as well as creative and autobiographical writing.

Grounded on a nineteen-acre organic farm and native woodland in Kerry, she and her partner run a project called The Barna Way. From here they engage with the diverse community groups through social farming and live food and cultural events, while protecting habitats for wildlife. This seventeen-year project is propelled by an accelerated sense of urgency around food insecurity, climate crisis, biodiversity loss and forced migration.

Fingleton is committed to creating cultural spaces where communities, artists, food producers and farmers can come together to resist industrial food systems and the fallacy of ‘cheap food’ by thinking global and acting local. Recent projects include the 30 Day Local Food Challenge, The Portlaoise Pizza and a recent installation of The Sandwich Project at the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork as part of Meat and Potatoes exhibition (2022).