Open Field was a collaboration with University College Dublin academics Lucy Collins and Joanna Kacprzyk, during April 2026, exploring the deep entanglement of plant life with human history, knowledge, and imagination through a multidisciplinary participatory practice.

Participants from different disciplines were brought together around a selection of ecopoems and a shared textile practice. The poems, chosen for their attention to vegetal temporality and agency, became the ground from which each person developed their own small textile piece. Individual works were later joined into a collective whole, tracing in thread the relationship between personal attention and shared environmental urgency.

Rooted in the tradition of communal making as a site of reflection and resistance, the workshop invited scientists, researchers, and practitioners to move outside their expertise and into a space of slow, embodied inquiry. Plants, so often overlooked in favour of more charismatic forms of life, were placed at the centre, reasserting their presence through text, touch, and the quiet act of making.

This was part of the ‘Embedding Creative Practice as Research’ collaborative project between UCD Earth Institute and UCD College of Arts and Humanities (CAH).

The project was led by Sarah Comyn (School of English, Drama and Film) with co-applicants PJ Mathews, Katherine Fama, Caitriona Devery and Nicolas Pillai.