← All events
family · Tuesday 21 July 2026 · 10:00am - 5:00pm 
Fieldcraft for the Curious at Lough Boora
At Lough Boora Discovery Park · Lough Boora, Co. Offaly
At Lough Boora Discovery Park · Lough Boora, Co. Offaly
Esker Arts brings its Fieldcraft for the Curious programme to Lough Boora Discovery Park on Tuesday 21 July 2026, a free full day nature and craft workshop for 10 to 17 year olds led by botanist Helena Brady and feltmaker Caitriona Nolan. This is the second of two linked sessions, the first having run at the Grand Canal on 7 July, so participants get a distinct outdoor setting and a different focus on the day, centred on Lough Boora’s bogland habitat rather than the canal.
The day combines a guided field trip with a creative workshop, so it is not simply a nature walk. Participants spend part of the day identifying and pressing plants around Lough Boora’s trails and cutaway bog under Helena Brady’s guidance, then move into craft work with feltmaker Caitriona Nolan, covering wool felting, printmaking and botanical drawing based on what they have found and observed outdoors. The two strands, science and craft, are meant to reinforce each other rather than run as separate halves of the day. Work produced across both Fieldcraft sessions is exhibited at Tullamore Library in August, giving participants a public outcome for the pieces they make rather than something that just goes home in a bag. A bus is provided from Esker Arts in Tullamore out to Lough Boora and back, which is worth knowing if a family does not want to arrange their own transport to the park. Places are limited and free places for a full day workshop tend to fill quickly, so early booking matters.
The group meets at Esker Arts on High Street, Tullamore, with a bus provided out to Lough Boora Discovery Park and back at the end of the day, so participants do not need to drive to the park separately.
Tullamore is the meeting point and the town where the resulting artwork is later exhibited at the library in August. There is more to see in Tullamore and across Co. Offaly.
Heading to Lough Boora Discovery Park in Tullamore? Offaly has plenty more to see. Read the Tullamore area guide, find what else is on, and explore the towns and villages nearby.
In town for Lough Boora Discovery Park? These Dublin tours book out in summer.