Seoidín O’Sullivan, who will be participating in our Struggles in Common event on May 18th, was involved in the initial trespassed Dolphins Barn Garden (2005) on the canal and was involved in initiating the SCR garden (2006- present) . She will be speaking about the projects relationship to commoning. Alongside this she will talk about her work with Traveller Women highlighting their historical experience of enclosure.
Here is a video about the South Circular Road Community Garden.
“The plot on the busy South Circular Road in Dublin city was an abandoned car parking lot. It was covered in old, scrubby tarmac and -like countless other sites in Ireland in 2007- it was in the queue for planning permission to develop it into a 3-story apartment block. Artist and local resident, Seoidín O’Sullivan, approached the landowner and he gave permission for a group of residents to use the site as a temporary community garden.
Together they slowly transformed the wasteland into a thriving, vibrant, urban garden. Each Saturday an interesting cross-section of people come together, they get their hands dirty and they grow their own vegetables.
The charming simplicity of it all belies deeper, less obvious, socio-political complexities. In growing their own food they quietly turn their back on the global food market with it’s huge price hikes and carbon emissions; by growing organic food and seed saving they resist the genetic ownership and the copyrighting of nature; and by growing food communally in a voluntary, not-for-profit way in a small plot in Dublin city earmarked for development since 2007 one could nearly believe that the corpse of the property-driven Celtic tiger might make excellent compost. This is more than vegetables, it is spores of resistance, germinating action and blossoming community.”
provisional university 