Coastal Cartography Workshops

To celebrate Science Week 2025, SEA School brings you Coastal Cartography.

A series of community mapping workshops culminating in a living map of our shorelines!

Funded by Research Ireland, in collaboration with Street Art Ink: Floating Voices Eco-educational Programme, and supported by SETU.

Coastal Cartography weaves together science, art, storytelling, and community to celebrate Waterford’s shorelines! Under the theme Then, Today, Tomorrow we’ll collect stories, map landscapes, and gather lived and scientific knowledge around how Waterford has changed — and how we might shape its future. Participants will document, design and create their own contributions to a collective, living map.

We invite residents ages 13 to 103 to join us for one or many of the cartography events!

COMMUNITY MAPPING WORKSHOPS

10th - 12th November at different Waterford locations

Hands-on map-making with local experts - historians, Irish language speakers, geographers, biologists, fishers, farmers and storytellers.

• Creation of a Landscape - Walking the Waterford Quays

  10th November, 10am to 1pm

  We begin with a walk along the Quays in Waterford with maritime historian and shipwright Michael Kennedy, who is known for creating the Viking Boat installation at the Viking Triangle. We’ll explore the layers of Waterford’s past, present and imagined futures — shipyards, port histories, industrial change — learning to annotate the stories embedded in place and the observations we make, focusing on the relationships between the river, the city, memory of place, estuarine ecology, and human use over time.

• Mapping Change at Lark Park, Tramore

  11th November, 10am - 1pm

  We continue at Lark Park in Tramore — a place once landfilled, now eco-park, where land, sea and estuary converge. We’ll explore mudflats, wintering birds, dunes and wildflowers. This event will map change, ecological value, human use, and imagine resilient futures for this evolving coastal space.

  
  

• Confluence and Transition at Cheek Point

  12th November, 10am - 1pm

  We conclude in Cheek Point, where the Suir estuary meets mudflats, heritage fishers, and ecological resilience. This session explores transformation: from fishing traditions to brackish life, from trade routes to environmental pressures. We'll map stories from geology to ecology, pollution to possibility, and imagine what balance between development and nature can look like.

SCIENCE CAFÉ & PANEL DISCUSSION

Sun 16th Nov, 3pm to 5pm

The Reg Waterford

Join us for an afternoon of lively conversation and panel discussion with marine scientists, geographers, historians, artists and local storytellers. This final event brings together the voices, stories, and insights gathered across our three field walks. An open, reflective conversation on how Waterford’s coastlines have evolved — and how we imagine their future.

LIVING MAP SHOWCASE

The team at STREET ART INK will transform the experiences, connections, and ideas of the program participants into an interactive, living map. Featuring community reflections, local science, and invitations for the public to continue to contribute to the coastal story. Final showcase Date and Location TBD.