Free Know Your Locality course centres on Roscommon

Roscommon County Council Heritage Office is delighted to offer: 'Know Your Locality – Roscommon' – a free online course in February.

It is amazing what you can discover about your local area from the snug safety of your home. Roscommon County Council Heritage Office is delighted to offer a FREE online course that will take you step-by-step through the available online resources enabling you to paint a picture of the geological, archaeological, and historical events that happened close to where you live.

While the course will look at examples from throughout Ireland, it will focus on the geology, archaeology and history of the county of Roscommon. As such, the course is aimed toward residents of Roscommon (who will be given preference for available course places) as well as enthusiasts of Roscommon’s natural and cultural heritage.

The course will be delivered through five online tutorials every Tuesday and Thursday over three weeks commencing Tuesday February, 8 next.

It will begin by looking at the very bedrock under your feet, examining the geological processes and glacial events that shaped the landscape and formed the soils. The course then focuses on the impacts of humans on that landscape over time, from pre-history to the last century.

The first workshop includes a summary of the course content and format. At the end of each workshop, a list of resources/links will be sent to the participants so that they can study their own locality.

Workshops 1-5 will each teach an individual research skill and also include 15-20 minutes to answer questions arising from the previous session. Workshop 5 will comprise a wrap-up, outlining the information obtained by the participants which can be utilised to tell the geology, archaeology, and history of their localities.

Workshop 5 will also outline how these skills can be used to make your own submission to the ‘KnowYour5k’ initiative by the Heritage Council and National Museum of Ireland https://www.ouririshheritage.org/content/category/archive/place/knowyour5k. Gathering these submissions for County Roscommon is a key outcome of the course.

The first Roscommon ‘Know Your Locality’ course last year was a great success and we are looking forward to offering a second opportunity for people in the county to take part in the free online course. We are delighted to work with the Irish Archaeological Field School who will deliver the course. Places are limited so don’t delay!

For full details and booking see https://iafs.ie/know-your-locality-roscommon-february-2022/