Thursday, June 16, 2011

Kylemore Abbey childrens' furniture park opens

A new outdoor children’s furniture trail has been opened in the grounds of Kylemore Abbey in Co. Galway.

Mother Maire Hickey of Kylemore’s Benedictine community said that in the wake of last year’s closure of the renowned girls’ secondary school in the abbey, the new venture was a gesture to show that children were still welcome.

"There can be no substitute for Scoil Aine, the secondary school which closed in June 2010, but Kylemore Abbey wants to continue to tell children and young people that they are welcome here, " she said.

Kylemore would, she said, "continue to be a place where the gifts and talents of young people will be fostered, and where they can learn to appreciate in the Benedictine tradition the values of beauty, the arts, creative hard work, and community."

Last year, Kylemore also marked the hundredth anniversary of the death of Mitchell Henry who built the castle as a hunting lodge and the play trail commemorates his life.

The house became the holiday home of the London-based Henrys’ and the playground for their nine children, a pet bear and a monkey.

The furniture was designed by second year students on the B.Sc. in Furniture Design and Manufacture programme at a branch of the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology in nearby Letterfrack.

Wood from trees that fell naturally on the Kylemore estate was used to design and make full-size pieces of fun, interactive children’s furniture.

Each student was assigned a specific location and asked to capture the "essence of the place" and to respond to the environment of their individual locations.

Some of the pieces were inspired by the Benedictines’ love of music, other by the Victorian Henrys’ love of geometric shapes.

The pieces will now form part of a permanent interactive exhibition at Kylemore, which attracts 200,000 visitors a year.

Brid Connell of Kylemore Tourism said her favourite items in the furniture trail were a harp based on one popular in Victorian times and miniature children’s picnic benches in the same design as the Victorian Walled Garden.

GMIT Lecturer Anthony Clare said that "engaging the creative minds and technical ability of our students with a project centred on fun, imagination, exploration and discovery for young children has brought about a project of huge significance, with inspired results".