Fiona Sinead Brehony Greater Manchester, United Kingdom
My name is Fiona Sinéad Brehony, and I am an artist and writer, working within spaces between Geography, documentary film, sound art and performance. I am currently working on a project that investigates possibilities of rivers as Cultural Heritage, with a specific focus on the socio-material history of River Irk in Manchester.
My personal values as a practitioner are entrenched with humanistic approaches to discovering ways of making environments more equitable. I am passionate about life and in exploring ways lived experiences can be filled with light and playfulness.
My research uses participatory documentary filmmaking practices and Socially Engaged Art as a way to examine a relationship between Regeneration, Environmental River History, and Industrial Heritage in Manchester in the years between 1500 and 2026. The time frame chosen for this study is significant in itself, as it spans pre-industrialisation, industrialisation, and post-industrialisation. The River Irk is a manufacturing hub of industrial Britain and the study takes place in an area beside the river that is currently undergoing a colossal transformation.
Environmental River Historians have studied the tangible material flows of rivers using intangible evidence such as oral histories and archive records as a way to (re)construct the past, make sense of the present and to (re)imagine possibilities for future rivers. My work aims to expand these studies by looking at material flows of the River Irk that no longer exist, establishing documentary filmmaking as a method in this field.
Documenting advertised Riverside apartments in the centre of Manchester, overlooking a river that is visibly in need of protection, is a vital part of this research. For this, I am intervening in scholarship relating to regeneration beside rivers and industrial heritage, questioning: to what extent does a river and its surroundings make a new building appealing, regardless of current sanitation levels?
My hope is that by engaging a wide community of residents, employees, and members of the public in the history and heritage of the River Irk, new insight of socio-material histories of the river will be revealed.
