Sustainable Toys - Making Dúchas Dolls!

Long before the days of disposable blind boxes, screens, and planned obsolescence, children across Ireland made their own toys. We know because they told us so, and we also know exactly how they did it.

The Dúchas Schools' Collection of folklore, gathered in the late 1930s, is full of first-hand accounts from children describing the dolls they made from whatever was to hand: scraps of yarn, clothes pegs, straw, rags, potatoes, sticks, and other found and leftover materials, along with a hefty helping of imagination and ingenuity. In this workshop, we'll read some of these accounts together, then recreate two of the dolls described in them (a yarn doll and a peg doll).

Creativity and play build resilience, at any age. Join us to experience how these old traditions of making, passed down hand-to-hand for hundreds of years, can still teach us about the importance of creating our own fun: joy without a price tag.