Meath Travellers Workshop, Traveller Living History Exhibition

The Traveller Living History Exhibition will be set up with the Traditional Traveller Barrel top wagon, campfire scene, shelter tent, tinware display, bread tasting, flower making and storytelling. Visitors or passers by will be encouraged to sit down and listen to the storyteller, taste some bread, have some refreshments. To take a step back to a time where the majority of Travellers lived in camps on the side of the road. To have a fully interactive experience by sitting in the wagon, sitting at the camp fire learning about the rich culture and heritage associated with the traditional Irish Travellers.

Key parts of Traveller culture today are shared through storytelling with stories about the history and cultural understandings, shared use of language and strong values built around extended families. Stories have been passed from generation to generation and are part of a rich storytelling history in the Traveller community. Stories in the Travelling community are significant because they are a point of memory. But often people can forget their importance, and how much they mean to Travellers. The stories are told with their own particular rhythms and humour.

The well-known storyteller Nell Marie McDonagh and her daughter Laura McDonagh will entertain, impart knowledge and keep the audience captivated with her lived experience bringing to life her memories of living on the side of the road with her family.

Tom McDonnell / Martin Tormay. Traveller tin smithing is a skill mastered by Travellers in the making of utensils from tin.

The living history project has a variety of aspects. The visual impact is very important to help people envisage what it would have been like to live in a Traveller camp. The colour, enchanting and ornate decoration of particularly the Wagon will captivate people to take a closer look. The informal chat is a characteristic of how Travellers communicate and it brings you into an atmosphere of acceptance and belonging. Not in the way of feeling that you are a fellow Traveller, but in a sense of being invited to join in and not feeling that you are imposing.

Understanding of what life was like for Travellers many years ago
How you slept - no beds - How you washed - no bathroom -How you cooked and ate - no kitchen
How you stored things - no fridge - How you earned a living - no social welfare
Farming labour – Tin smithing - Horse dealing - Knife grinders
Entertainers - musician, singer, story teller and news carrier
Barter system - trading, but not with money