Application deadline extended for the Ireland-Canada Dry Stone Walling Scholarship 2022.

Ireland-Canada Scholarship 2022

IMPORTANT NEWS!

Applications are extended to DSWAI members until May 31st.

Send your expression of interest by email to info@dswai.ie

‘The Waldemar Wower Bursary Award’

A collaboration between Dry Stone Canada and the Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland

APPLICATIONS ARE EXCLUSIVE TO MEMBERS ONLY UNTIL MAY 31st 2022

We are happy to announce that the 2022 Ireland-Canada scholarship is open for applications

This is an exciting opportunity to improve your dry stone walling skills by learning from some of the best dry stone wallers in our respective countries and participating in both the Dry Stone Canada Symposium (September 23-25TH, 2022) on Amherst Island, Ontario, Canada, and the Feile na gCloch Dry Stone Festival on Inis Oirr, County Galway, Ireland (September 15th to 18th, 2022)

For our Dry Stone Canada applicants, we are oﬀering a scholarship to Ireland from September 2022 and for our DSWAI applicants, we are oﬀering a scholarship to Canada from September, 2022

What you will receive:

Participation in both festivals (fees paid).
Hands-on training with a few local wallers.
Your plane ticket.
Accommodation covered while at the festival.
A stipend to cover your food and accommodation on your days oﬀ.

What is expected of you:

A presentation at either festival or symposium telling attendees about who you are, and your connection to dry stone walling.
Volunteering at 3 workshops in your home country.
Volunteering at the festival/ symposium in both your home and host country.
In Ireland, a write-up of your experience for the DSWAI newsletter/website/forum and in Canada, a blog post for our website.
Attending both festivals and symposiums and exchange training opportunities.
Enough money to cover any unforeseen costs.
Personal travel insurance.
An up-to-date passport.
A genuine desire to actively participate in your home dry stone walling association.

For more information and to apply, please send your resume along with a cover letter explaining why you are the ideal candidate for this exchange. Please let us know of any special needs that you might have to make this opportunity possible for you. We are open to all levels of walling and encourage those with less experience to apply as an opportunity to have a memorable experience and learn the skills needed to further your dry stone walling future.

To apply for the scholarship to go to Canada, please email Ken Curran at DSWAI @ info@dswai.ie

To apply for the scholarship to go to Ireland, please email Renee Nadeau at DSC @ drystonecanada@yahoo.ca

The scholarship is open exclusively to our respective association members until May 21st, 2022 at midnight. (EXTENDED TO MAY 31st 2022)

For those who did not know Waldemar Wower (after whom the bursary program is named), below is an excerpt from his obituary in the DSWAI Members Newsletter in November 2018.

Waldemar Wower 1971-2018

In 2009 Waldemar and the other DSWAI founders were participants in a training course in the FáS Training Centre, Monavalley,Tralee, County Kerry (now Kerry College). The course saw them practicing entirely dry stone technique and this course was a supportive and formative part of the seed that was to grow into a love of dry stone walling. A friendship soon emerged between the three that saw many days and evenings spent talking about dry stone and what could and was being done with the medium in the training center and out there in the international dry stone ‘scene’.

With Waldemar being the main driving force, the three DSWAI founders began following groups in Canada and the U.S. who were holding events and creating public space works in dry stone.

Waldemar began showing his fellow DSWAI founders images and videos of people like John Shaw Rimmington and what he and others were doing in Canada to promote and actively engage with dry stone as a creative medium for expressing a new wave of stone craft without the use of mortar. The fascination was infectious and soon the three began to discuss the idea of doing something in Ireland to establish a dry stone walling group. Waldemar would regularly say “We should do something here!”

Eventually, this notion was made real when the three founding members of DSWAI sat

down and put pen to paper, forming the Dry Stone Wall Association of Ireland on 21st August 2009.

Waldemar was one of the wallers on-site in the summer of 2013 to launch the Gathering of Stones project.

The DSWAI owes its foundation to Waldemar Wower.

Despite his huge admiration for the dry stone wallers of Canada and a desire to visit there and 'join in' with them, Waldemar never managed to make the trip.

He became ill in early 2018 and died of cancer in October of that year.

In 2021 a working group of 4 DSWAI and 3 DSC members met for 5 weeks to draw up a proposal document for the Bursary. One of the group suggestions was the naming of the bursary after Waldemar, to acknowledge his part in the emergence of DSWAI.

Hence the 'Waldemar Wower Bursary Award'