Irish Arts Center to Host IRISH LANGUAGE DAY This Month

Irish Arts Center has announced details of Féile na Gaeilge / Irish Language Day 2023, curated by Ireland's The Hedge School, on Saturday, May 13. The event welcomes the public to Irish Arts Center's state-of-the-art new home for a dynamic day-long learning experience including bilingual workshops, conversation circles, film, poetry, live music, singing, guided practices, and more. This year's language celebration explores the themes of the season of Bealtaine, a turning point on the Wheel of the Year map handed down by the ancients. This fire festival marks the transition from the dark to the bright half of the year, from giamos to samos. Bealtaine celebrates the god Belenus (Bright One) and welcomes the "rekindling" of the sun with the promise of summer.

The Hedge School is an award-winning cultural learning platform whose programs have been described as "an Irish drumbeat with a global resonance / buille druma Éireannach a spreagann creathanna domhanda." The President of Ireland / Uachtarán na hÉireann Michael D. Higgins recently said about the Hedge School, "I am deeply grateful to The Trailblazery's Hedge School for bringing together those who wish to question the kind of world we inhabit and the future we wish to create together. I thank you for all that you do to not only imagine but to realize a better world."

Féile na Gaeilge / Irish Language Day 2023 Bealtaine event includes:

Shared teachings rooted in the ancient touch points of the Wheel of the Year. In Ireland, the ancient ones measured their cosmos in wheels, spirals, in the movement of the stars, and the rising and setting of the sun and moon. Our ancestors were deeply rooted in the land and the seasons and the cycles of the natural world. They marked these gateways with ritual and ceremony and bequeathed us with a calendar map that holds wisdom for us today as ancestors-in-training.

A screening of Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion - Poems of Máire Mhac an tSaoi. This documentary directed by Paula Kehoe explores the life, work and sensual poetic imagination of Máire Mhac an tSaoi, one of Ireland's greatest living poets. She helped revolutionize Irish poetry by drawing on a native tradition to express a passionate sensibility and taboo emotions, at a time when women's voices were on the margins of Irish literature and society. This beautiful film also features the movement poetry of performance artist Maureen Fleming.

A live immersive listening experience with artists Kathy Scott (cultural activist, host, writer) and Brian Crosby (composer, musician, BellX1) inspired by the ancient Irish tradition of the immram, or wonder-voyage. The immram practice invokes the spirit of the land and evokes the mythos of place through symbols, sounds, scent and other soma-sensory explorations. This guided ritual infuses Irish cultural motifs with Bealtaine inspired images, words and phrases activated through the power of collective imagination. They will also be joined by Leah Song (singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, artist, and activist known for her role as one of the two front sisters of Rising Appalachia) for a very special gig to close out the day.

Irish language workshops with teachers (múinteoirs) Joseph Jones, Siobhán Ní Chiobháin, Caoimhe Nic Giollarnáith and Paul Ferris, with a focus on the season and stories of Bealtaine including the great fire of Uisneach, fairies and festival flower wreaths, traditional cake making and native place names.

Féile na Gaeilge / Irish Language Day: Bealtaine weaves creativity, heritage, language, folklore, indigenous wisdom and kinship with individual, social and ecological wellbeing. It will be a day full of cultural exploration, conversation and kinship-ag cíoradh cúrsaí cultúrtha, ag caint agus ag comhrá. -open to Gaeilge enthusiasts of all levels, from absolute beginners to advanced speakers and to anyone who is curious about Irish cultural heritage.

Schedule of Events

1:00 - 1:15 pm

Welcome & introduction to the Wheel of the Year

1:15 - 2:45 pm

Workshops

3:00 - 3:45 pm

Tea and conversation circles

4:00 - 5:30 pm

Film screening: Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion

6:00 - 7:30 pm

Hedge School/Scoil Scairte's Bealtaine Immram - or "wonder voyage," an ancient Irish storytelling experience - guided by Kathy Scott with composer and music artist Brian Crosby and joined by singer-songwriter and mutli-instrumentalist Leah Song of Rising Appalachia.

7:30 - 9:00 pm

After-party

For those who can't make the full day's activities, individual tickets to the film screening and Bealtaine Immram are available and linked in the schedule above.

For more information, please visit: irishartscenter.org/event/feile-na-gaeilge-irish-language-day-2023.

Curator: Kathy Scott for the Hedge School

Composer & Musician: Brian Crosby

Singer & Songwriter: Leah Song

Creative Producer: Maedhbh Mc Cullagh for the Hedge School

About Irish Arts Center

Irish Arts Center, founded in 1972 and based in Hell's Kitchen, New York City, is a home for artists and audiences of all backgrounds who share a passion or appreciation for the evolving arts and culture of contemporary Ireland and Irish America. IAC presents, develops, and celebrates work from established and emerging artists and cultural practitioners, providing audiences with emotionally and intellectually engaging experiences-fueled by collaboration, innovation, adventurousness, authenticity, and the celebration of our common humanity, in an environment of Irish hospitality. Steeped in grassroots traditions, IAC also provides community education programs and access to the arts for people of all ages and ethnic, racial, and socioeconomic backgrounds. In an historic partnership of the people of Ireland and New York, Irish Arts Center recently opened a state-of-the-art new facility to support this mission for the 21st century.)

About The Trailblazery

The Trailblazery first took flight as a creative gathering for people who blaze trails in their own spectacular or intimate way. Since our inaugural event at The Office of Non-Compliance in 2011 we have gathered a collection of provocative and inspiring stories from thousands of people with brilliant minds and courageous hearts. We have taken The Trailblazery on tour around Ireland inhabiting government buildings, historic prisons, decommissioned courthouses, masonic lodges, university campuses, abandoned warehouses, festival fields and sacred spaces. Since our world stopped in 2020 amid a festival of crises, we have been nudging humanity forward online and expanded into a global family, kin and kindred.

What is a Hedge School?

Back in the 1700's, Irish education was outlawed and the process of learning took to the land. Hedge Schools gathered wherever people could find shelter; along hedgerows, fields, mountains, by rivers and under the stars. Out at these wild edges, our culture was kept alive. Despite a turbulent history, the Irish language has survived and is encoded with a wisdom that can help us today as ancestors-in-training.

The Hedge School is a home for kindred spirits rooted in Ireland that invites people around the world on an immersive learning experience into the heart and soul of Irish culture, heritage and language. It is a place of learning and unlearning for these times. At the heart of Hedge School is kinship. Our experiences are guided by a host of inspiring bilingual multidisciplinary artists, activists, creatives, educators, culture makers and indigenous language keepers.

Our methodology taps into a growing cultural desire for new ways of learning and unlearning, connecting and sharing at this extraordinary time on our planet. Our unique pedagogy for our Irish language branch, Scoil Scairte, was recently recognised by Léargas and awarded the European Language Label as an innovative initiative in language teaching, learning and promotion. Find out more here.

President of Ireland / Uachtarán na hÉireann Michael D. Higgins recently said about the Hedge School, "I am deeply grateful to The Trailblazery's Hedge School for bringing together those who wish to question the kind of world we inhabit and the future we wish to create together. I thank you for all that you do to not only imagine but to realise a better world."