Rural Vernacular is an art research programme that will take place in Ireland between April - October '06. The project will bring together artists from a number of countries – Ireland, U.K. Croatia, Hungary, Russia - whose work takes the form of socially-engaged art practice. This type of practice is of particular interest in the rural context because of the way it engenders debate, empowers other people and shifts the focus onto issues. The selected artists will come together for an initial weekend of discussion in rural county Clare during February ‘06. Some of these discussions will involve people from the surrounding rural community - people with particular insight into various aspects of the vernacular culture. Each artist will then define a period [or periods] of research to be undertaken in some rural context(s) that they have identified in Co. Clare. [This will be worked out with the project co-ordinator in terms of budgets, resources required etc.] They will be asked to consider rural knowledge and rural culture, and to engage with rural communities as part of their research. The research can take whatever form the artists decide. They will each work with an assistant drawn from the community of local artists. This is a way of providing mentoring to local artists and valuable local knowledge to visiting artists. An online diary of the research project will be created by participating artists and their assistants and will be posted on the Shifting Ground website. At the end of their research they will propose a temporary work (or works) to take place in a particular rural 'context' during the month of October '06, to coincide with a European conference on culture and art in rural contexts arising from the Shifting Ground project (www.shiftingground.net). This will bring an additional audience to the work, and will therefore bring the work to the attention of a wider European community.