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Written by Catherine Rountree
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Tuesday, 30 November 2004 |
Northwest Community Co-operation
North Leitrim apart from the discerning few has never really
been the destination. It’s always been a marker on the way.
Welcome to the West, warm wild wonderful and wet! Leitrim home of the last dinosaurs.
Well sshh! Don’t tell Dustin, because a very quiet change is happening.
Recently I travelled to Leitrim for a rather intriguing reason. I was invited
to come and see the Green Festival Northwest co hosted by diverse groups such
as The Organic Centre, The Living Architecture centre, Ardnahoo Health Centre,
The Glens Centre and the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, to name but a few. These are
truly diverse but inspirational groups and people who provided a mind stunningly
diverse, exciting and innovative showcase of the thinking and action of the north-west.
They sought to ‘celebrate our environment, heritage, culture, food and ecology.’
And they set about doing so with abandon and delight, despite the notorious precipitation
issue. Yes, there was rain!
(Deep Breath) There were workshops in tipi making, woodcarving, composting, green
technology, ceramics, creativity and dance, stained glass, econohouses, creative
writing, moving towards sustainability, eco-tourism.
There bat walks, hill walks, hedgerow walks, writing walks, walking back to the
pub walks. There was a lot! There was music and poetry, dance and yoga. There
was luxuriating at Ard Nahoo with some great salads.
There was serious stuff: looking at housing and asking ‘is this the best
there is?’ There were prototype demos for new ways of building, heating
and living together as communities within society. There was talk of how to live
without mortgages and what we really need to live.
My only quibble with the festival is that there was a month’s worth of activities
packed into a long week, and then a year’s worth of thinking and digesting
to go with it if you managed to catch some of the stimulating lectures and seminars.
My advice is to book your holidays now for next September so that you can hightail
it to the west.
Forget the Costa del wherever. Head for the hills. Head for next year’s
Green Festival. But be warned. Things may not look the same again after. You might
find yourself thinking about changing the commute around, no more East to West,
but West to North-west and forget the rest. Some fine people have already done
so, and some just stayed put!
Details at www.thegreenfestival.com.
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