Creative Weekend in Glenamoy, Erris

Report on creative weekend and some musings on the role of poetry, music and creativity in struggle

In addition to the national Shell to Sea meeting last weekend in Erris there was also a creative weekend organised by members of Cork Community Circus to make banners, raise spirits and bring some lightheartedness to counter the heaviness that shell, statoil and the irish state are trying to dump on this community.

The group hired out Healy's Hall in Glenamoy, that was also used for the meeting, for the duration of the weekend, beginning on Friday afternoon. Over the course of the weekend these colourful visitors, assisted by local people and Shell to Sea members put together a number of banners and agit prop materials for the campaign with which they decorated the hall before the meeting, as well as helping provide food that was shared by all afterwards. They also held a circus skills workshop and a puppet show on the Sunday and began the construction of a stone circle on the beach by the solidarity camp. On Monday morning they all went to the picket along with one of their friends, a fish-headed man who was observed educating Gardai as to their duties and behaviour.
The value of this kind of activity cannot be under-estimated and here's to more of it. When faced with the force and aggression that is pushing the Corrib project forward it is easy to feel helpless and so become frustrated, desperate or depressed. The challenge is to respond to these situations with creativity and courage. when Philip Ikurusi from the Niger Delta spoke in Cork a few weeks back he said that his people had been fighting oil companies for 50 years, two generations more or less. Looking at it that way the question becomes not. How do we stop this? but How do we survive as a community? How do we keep ourselves healthy and happy in the face of oppression and violence? How do we face losing battles yet keep our integrity, dignity and solidarity?
Maybe we can stop Shell and maybe we can't but whether we win this battle or not, we ( by which i mean the people of Erris, Shell to Sea and all those who are fighting for justice on this small island) still have to be able to keep living, raising kids, growing food, looking after each other and doing the things that make life liveable. I believe that clowning, poetry, music, art and dance give us the space and the strength to do this, to look squarely at what is going on in the world deal with how it makes us feel and do what has to be done .

When queen Elizabeth 1st ruled in England she sent a poet called Edmund Spencer over to Ireland. he lived in North Cork, near Doneraile and he was a traitor to his craft because he sent word back to the queen that to break the Irish she had to break the bardic system that existed at that time. He understood that the Bards, the storytellers and poets somehow held for the whole people the memories of where they had come from and so could give a sense of where they were going, allowing the people to write their own story. By degrading this system, by making it harder for bards to live and work so the English were able to write the Irish out of their own story into someone elses. Seems to me that process was never reversed, that right now Shell are trying to write this nation into their story.

I was up in Erris all last weekend, I helped cook food, attended the meeting and played music at the picket on Monday and I felt a change from previous times I'd been up, there was more clarity, more cohesion, things felt less desperate and I had this sense of endurance that there is a story being written here, that it is our story, not Shell's or the government's. I don't know what caused this change, I think it was a combination of the excellent work that went into the meeting, the hot soup served afterwards - more of this at meetings please! the decorations, the colour, the visitors from Norway and peoples' determination to keep going. Anyway, it is up to us what happens in this story. What we need is to use our imaginations and tongues to envisage and speak out a way through these troubles to whatever lies beyond and to use our ears and minds to listen to the desires, fears, thoughts and dreams of those who we travel with.
Any poets, musicians, clowns out there? You have a role to play in this campaign..........

Group banner painting

Completed banner and funny dancers

Unicylist

Fragment of contemporary stone circle