Roisin Markham

This week was full managed to get two good sunrise coffees in with eldest and be or away from my desk more than I was at it, which is unusual for me.

Hi there welcome to my weekly studio notes where I look back over the week and think about the whole of the week, sometimes it’s more than the sum of its parts.

Reflection

Monday was a great and insightful open farm session with Social Farming Ireland. The Social Farm was local enough to me in Wexford over near Enniscorthy. A really nice set up with plenty of hospitality, well attended by farmers curious to know more and a mixture of experienced and newer social farmers. There were also participants, parents, service providers, county council Healthy Ireland and Aging Well representatives as well as the team from Social Farming Ireland.

Farmers came from Cork, Wicklow, Carlow and from all across Wexford. the session was nicely paced with and introduction by SFI, an informal introduction to the farm by David and Nuala who run the farm and both are social farmers. David recounted how the farms has changed in his time there and how social farming had brought people back on to the farm.

After some questions and answers which included passionate and positive advocating by parents of the farm for their vulnerable adult sons we went on a farm walk. It was interesting to hear how the development of path a to the hen house and animal pens for the ISPCA rescue goats and donkeys add to the SF participants experience of social farming. Plenty of questions and informal conversations during the farm walk. It was great for me to be able to have casual conversations with a variety of social farmers as part of my work towards researching wellbeing out comes for farmers.

Because the team was in Wexford we met in the afternoon and finalised survey questions, and agreed the format of the survey.

I’m looking forward to seeing the results in the week coming.

The Frederick Douglass & Civil Rights Festival Wexford November 14th – 23rd 2025 asked me to help them with updating the website. Rather a convoluted WordPress template needing minor changes to update the text and graphics and get the countdown timer functioning, I did not know if I could sort it or not. But it was a small ask and I was happy to support if I could.

Tuesday was a lot about doughnut economics with a good conversation about Ireland Leaving Certificate Economics Curriculum, which has a public consultation at the moment.

Leaving Certificate Economic Curriculum Submission & Campaign
We are looking to put together a rapid working group for the next 4 weeks for a submission and campaign for the Economic Curriculum review in secondary schools.
We propose the Working group to be made up of secondary economics teachers, parents, students. – the group will work on the submission and build a campaign.
The campaign will broadly invite parents and guardians, teachers, school principles, industry leaders, people with opinions who care about what we are teaching our young people and our networks that can support this submission.

IDEN, Irish Doughnut Economics Network October 2025 Newsletter

Spent about four hours prepping an IDEN newsletter as I wanted to spotlight Global Doughnut Days next week. So many brilliant opportunities to listen, participate and learn all across sectors all across the globe and with Doughnut 3.0 being launched Tuesday.

Midweek I attended my first Wexford County Council Economic Special Policy Committee meeting as the PPN, Public Participatory Network Enviromental. Was n’t sure what to expect, I appreciated a gentleman making me feel welcome and ensuring I found my feet. This is part of my active citizenship and using my public voice.

Thursday I worked on SFI research and enjoyed catching up with my associates.

Catching up with my administration, invoicing and bookkeeping was in fact very freeing. It’s amazing how much mental loading it can consume as a small business owner. I’ve had a few recommendations of automating my invoicing. I am considering it. Sub contracting work and building teams for work does complicate things a lot in our small business.

Throughout the week I prepared an application for an interesting job, it had an application form rather than a CV which took a lot longer to complete. I sent it off Friday let’s see what happens next.

At the same time I’ve begun an analysis of what I really offer through our business and am taking a cold hard look at what I’m doing. Too honest? Possibly, but true.

Friday was an amazing day of work with Dr. Máiread Hurley from Trinity, she’s hired me to support her on some research and to co-produce a workshop for ISSN. Loving that work it definitely feels like we are making something together and I’m enjoying the mix of our backgrounds, some reference points we mutual have others satellites. Some are totally new reference points to the other. Metaphor has a rich playfulness.

Both of these pieces of work ISF and the TCD/ISSN have a resonance to each other, a core tenant to a whole person outcome through wellbeing, education, building confidence and being outdoors.

I think about the embed economy a lot in terms of work, care and wellbeing. Both in paid and unpaid labour, in care and how that impacts on my being resourced and how well I am.

Insights

This week I attended to reflecting on the week more fully; I reviewed all my notes, drawings, photos, links and made a zine. I gave myself space to write outside of the container of my studio notes.

I noticed I slightly resisted writing my studio notes this week. I thought about making them terse. Reality is they become what I need them to be in the moment I write them, in this moment.

Since the beginning of the year I have had a practice of saving every single internet link I click on. Often instead of instantly jumping to somewhere on the internet I will save the link to go back to it later. As part of my weekly reflection I go back through the week of links- sometimes categorising them, sometimes sharing them in resources. It has been really useful for several reasons.

I’ve been sitting with – How do we know we are well? since week 37, the Healthy Ireland Conference and it came up in our SFI work this week. I found myself talking about the survey questions that were not used and how they reminded me of a tool I’d created some years ago. As I spoke out loud several things converged and a distinct moment of clarity, simplicity of a threshold moment became significant thing.

The team got very excited as we discussed the idea and I shared a little of the reference points that had converged. Their input was fantastic and refined and idea to prototype.

I’ve been deep in a kind of filtration system of sense making this year on – how do we create that future worth living into?

It is not a book, it has to be more of a living practice and that is something I want to actively be putting into practice and prototyping with more clients. There are a few clients that I know are sitting with tensions, complexity and not knowing how to move on from normative business as usual. I’d love to have a cohort of 2-3 clients doing similar work so we could create a small community of practice, also attending to and economising dynamic a triple funding model.

There are other clients wanting to embed climate and social justice across their organisations I’d love to be hired for this work. One particular client I just want to understand the highest points of tension so we can look at the most meaningful places for systemic change. I am wondering what they are sitting with about impact, complexity, culture and change that deserve a place for deeper exploration? What are you sitting with, do you need deeper dive space?

This week I finished listening to Le Guin’s, The dispossessed and reading Mia Birdsong How we show up. I really enjoyed both of them.

I shared Justine Broussard work as an Amateur Ancestor work and story of an ammonite and a plastic bag that she shared in Hawkwood.

A question for you

Do you stop during your day at any time to check in on your own health? Like even a pause of – how am I feeling?

Resources

Mia Birdsongs book and the work I am doing at the moment really resonate with the idea that we need more spaces of being, so when I came across Kat Vellos work 27 places of Being on LinkedIn this week it really resonated with me. Here website is https:// weshouldgettogether.com/blog/places-you-deserve

This is a very poignant interview with Manchán Mangan who died last week. There have been huge outpourings of grief all across my socials. For those of you that know his work I’d love to her a bit about your relationship to his work. For those of you that might not know his work I’m sharing this here.

I’m particularly fascinated about what he shares about sunrises and the first light of the day also about holy wells and where the geomorphology holds the space for water in a particular way.

I’ve not had a chance to listen to Blindboys tribute to him yet but it’s been recommended.

A view to the week ahead

I’m looking forward to the week ahead. Busy with research work which I love. I’m looking forward to synthesising the SFI research work with the mentors, doing a qualitative and qualitative analysis on all the data including the survey. Bring that knowledge to insights and next steps with the client.

Tuesday 14 October, 13:15, I’m joining this initiative from TU Dublin as a kind if train the trainer, Lara the Social Justice Co-ordinator from the Dominican Sisters who has been doing amazing work with faith based organisations will also join us.
Step into the Doughnut – sharing experiences and insights of facilitators. Hear more about this embodied learning activity from experienced facilitators from TU Dublin (Dr. Olivia Freeman & Dr. Lucia Walsh) and Roisin Markham (Irish Doughnut Economics Network) who have collectively delivered over 70 ‘Step into the Doughnut’ workshops! Online  1:15 PM – 2:15 PM more details and link to register.

I’m in Dublin Thursday and Friday this week, the novelty of it!

Hope you have a great week!