event
Community Constellations for Dark Skies Launch
DATE: 20 Aug, 2025TIME: 04:00 PM - 07:00 PM
all times are in Irish time unless noted otherwise
Join Wilderland and the Friends of Mayo Dark Skies to celebrate the launch of Community Constellations for Dark Skies at the National Museum of Ireland at Turlough Park.
Mayo Dark Sky Park is hosting an afternoon of live music, with a free lantern making workshop with Wilderland artist Tom Meskell at the Museum of Country Life. It's an opportunity to meet the Mayo Dark Sky Park team and learn about County Mayo’s progress toward becoming a Dark Sky Reserve, and chat with the fellow communities involved in the new Community Constellations for Dark Skies project that aims to provide a heritage interpretation plan for communities participating in dark sky preservation and restoration projects in County Mayo.
Tom Meskell will be holding a drop-in, sustainable lantern-making workshop, where he'll show us how to make beautiful, paper flower lanterns with simple paper-folding techniques. Participants can make a paper lotus lantern individually or collaboratively with friends and family of all ages. Each biodegradable lantern uses no glue, and will include small, warm white LED lights, for low-energy use, and to minimise light-pollution and disturbance to night pollinators when using the lanterns.
You can chat with Tom about the large collaborative lantern sculptures he's creating with local communities for Mayo Dark Sky Park and get involved this summer if you live locally. Workshop participants can take their lanterns home, and keep them to use in the Dark Sky Festival lantern parade this autumn, where Tom will be unveiling his new artworks.
All welcome.
FREE entry, no booking required.
This workshop is just one of our Heritage Week creative workshops and events celebrating our natural landscape, cultural heritage and craft traditions, you can find them all on our events page.
About Community Constellations for Dark Skies
Community Constellations for Dark Skies is a project that aims to provide a heritage interpretation plan for communities participating in dark sky preservation and restoration projects in County Mayo.
As the county is working towards becoming a dark sky reserve, this plan will assist the understanding and importance of dark sky preservation. It will work directly with communities to develop a customised interpretation of dark skies that is specific to their own unique location and identity. It will help visitors to appreciate better quality lighting practices and educate on how small changes can enhance biodiversity and include climate action measures.
The project will develop a template for dark sky interpretation which will be tailored for up to 19 communities, providing supporting data through sky quality measurement and connecting a network of dark sky communities linked under the concept of community constellation.
The individual pieces will be consolidated into one overall interpretation plan for County Mayo's dark skies, providing a strategic direction for the development of an International Dark Sky Reserve for the county. In joining the dots of the participating communities, a new constellation shape will be created as the icon of the project.
Find out more on the Mayo Dark Sky Park website.
event artist(s):
related project(s) / collaboration(s):
event location:
National Museum of Ireland - Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, Co. Mayo, F23 HY31
