Saint Mary's first year & some third year Art and Design students along with our Creative Schools focus group, took part in a most informative talk and workshop all about our wonderful bogs last Friday. The bog will act as a primary source of inspiration for our wonderful visual installation to be designed and made for an atrium space in our school. This piece promises to act as a strong visual statement and encourage other subject areas within the STEAM group of subjects to follow suit. Our students interacted with Ronan Casey, a conservationalist with the 'Living Bogs' project. Ronan gave a most informative talk about the wonderful plant and insect species that thrive in our very few areas of pristine bog. Students sampled the incredible water retaining powers of Spagnum Moss. This is a plant with super powers. This plant will encourage our wetlands to grow again and reduce Co 2 emissions into our atmosphere. We are planning to follow this up with a trip to the Clara Living Bog project to witness these developments first hand. Students also met Tina Claffey, the number one bog photographer in the country. Tina displayed her wonderful compositions from the wetlands in Botswana, where she spent many years. Tina has now focussed her attention on photographing the most beautiful shots of our fabulous bog scenes at different times of the day and year. The students came away with a newfound appreciation of our surrounding bogs plus they can now see the potential for the bog as an amazingly rich source of inspiring imagery to take us into this wonderfully creative project.