The Hedge School in partnership Irish Arts Centre presents
Irish Language Day | Féile na Gaeilge
Bealtaine
Returning to our Senses | Beo Bríomhar Arís
This event has now ended. Please join the waitlist below to be notified of future events.
We are thrilled to be curating Féile na Gaeilge / Irish Language Day 2023 at Irish Arts Centre. This dynamic cultural learning experience includes bilingual workshops, conversation circles, film, poetry, live music, guided practices and more.
This year's language celebration explores the themes and energies of the season of Bealtaine (Bee-yowl-tan-eh), a turning point on the great Wheel of the Year calendar 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.
Meet your Guides
Kathy Scott
Kathy is a cultural activist and creative entrepreneur dedicated to creating provocative experiences that animate the spirit of our times. Her greatest mission in this life is to nudge humanity forward by inspiring people to rise and lift each other up along the way. She is the creative director of The Trailblazery which was founded as a response to a need for deeper human connection and belonging in our world.
Brian Crosby
Brian Crosby is a piano player, performer and film score composer. He was a founding member of Bell X1 and creator of The Cake Sale. In 2008, Brian moved to Berlin where he converted an old factory in Kreuzberg to a modular studio complex where he collaborated with fellow studio residents Dustin O’Halloran, Hildur Guõnadóttir and the late Jóhann Jóhannsson on numerous Film and TV scores. His latest album Imbrium, a spacious collection of pared back piano recordings was described by The Sunday Times as “nine unadorned piano instrumentals capture the stillness of life suspended, each piece as delicate and moving as it is restrained”. www.briancrosby.com
Paula Kehoe
Paula Kehoe is an award-winning filmmaker whose work is informed by an interest in social justice, the environment, language and culture. 'An Dubh in Gheal: Assimilation' won the Radharc Award for excellence in social documentary in 2014. 'Deargdhúil: Anatomy of Passion' is a critically acclaimed creative portrait of the revolutionary Irish poet Máire Mhac an tSaoi. Paula created Ireland's first VR 360 filmpoem, 'I am Galway 2020' as Filmmaker in Residence for Galway's successful bid for European Capital of Culture in 2020. Her most recent work is a six part creative docudrama series ‘An Diabhal Inti’ (The Devil's in Her) and the cine-poem ‘City of a Thousand Suns’ (co-directed with Feargal Ward). paulamkehoe.com
Leah Song
Leah Song is a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumental musician, storyteller, poet, and activist known for her role as front woman in Rising Appalachia (with her sister Chloe Smith). Using her voice and her vision as a means of creating community, the ways of the storyteller and troubadour are in her blood. Her music is based in the traditions of Appalachian Southern Soul and international roots music. Song engages in social activism and is involved with the environment, food justice, human rights and prison outreach. She gathers tools and teachings of resilience, mythology, grief, creative ritual, and rewilding and has studied and worked alongside some of the greatest teachers of our time, including Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Martin Shaw, Joanna Macy, and Winona LaDuke.
Caoimhe Nic Giollarnáith
Caoimhe Nic Giollarnáith is originally from County Kildare. She attended Irish language medium schools and graduated summa cum laude from the National University of Ireland, Galway, with BA and MA degrees in modern Irish. She has several years of teaching experience as an adjunct professor. Caoimhe currently teaches Irish language and literature undergraduate courses at Lehman College, CUNY. In the past, she has taught at Fordham University, Manhattan College, and Rosetta Stone. In 2015, Caoimhe worked as a researcher and guest speaker on the Academy award-nominated Irish language television series GAA USA. Caoimhe has featured as a guest on several shows on Raidió na Gaeltachta, Ireland's national Irish language radio station. She is a board member of Gaeil Nua-Eabhrac, a non-profit which aims to promote the Irish language in New York. Caoimhe has organized Irish language and cultural events at the Irish Consulate, New York. She also teaches Irish to the families of the Irish consular team.
Siobhán Ní Chiobháin
Siobhán Ní Chiobháin is a native Irish speaker and award-winning creative producer originally from the Dingle Gaeltacht in County Kerry and now based in New York. Siobhán was educated entirely through Irish Language Medium Education, and completed a BA in media arts with Irish from Dublin Institute of Technology and a postgraduate cert in digital media communications from Ulster University. While based in Belfast, Siobhan produced and directed bilingual media productions for BBC, RTÉ, TG4, UTV, Raidió na Gaeltachta, and more. She is a regular contributor to Irish language media including BBC and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. Siobhán is a co-founder of Gaeil Nua-Eabhrac, a group that organizes Irish language events, including pop up Gaeltachts, throughout NYC. Siobhán is passionate about teaching and sharing the Irish language and culture around the language, and especially loves sharing Irish language contemporary media, from memes to tweets and videos, in her classes.
Joseph Jones
Joseph Jones is an Irish speaker from West Belfast, County Antrim, now an actor, model, and creative ambassador based in New York. He was educated through Irish language medium education from the age of three, where his family had to fight for the right to be taught in their native tongue. A graduate of the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in Manhattan, he is an active member of the arts and Irish language community in Ireland and New York. He has worked with TG4, Foras na Gaeilge, and local councils. Joseph is a regular contributor to Irish language media outlets including the BBC and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta. He is very passionate about the language and loves to teach it in a fun contemporary way
Paul Ferris
Paul Ferris is a graduate of NYU’s Irish and Irish American Studies MA program, and has taught the Irish language with NYU’s Speaking Freely program and at Drew University. He studied the language in County Galway and County Donegal, and served on the executive board of the North American Association of Celtic Language Teachers. Paul is a frequent invited teacher at immersion programs in the US and Canada.
Maedhbh Mc Cullagh
Maedhbh Mc Cullagh is a multidisciplinary cultural producer, arts programmer, and creative consultant from Ireland. A passionate arts and Irish cultural advocate, for more than two decades she has been producing and managing artistic programs, presentations, productions, and special events for international festivals and cultural organizations, in Europe and the US. As well as her freelance work she is the Director of the Solas Nua Capital Irish Film Festival in Washington, DC.
Maureen Fleming
Maureen Fleming is renowned for her original form of visual art theater. With the discipline of a classicist and the imagination of an iconoclast Fleming connects cultures and art forms in an interdisciplinary celebration of femininity and the universality of the soul’s journey. A 2021 Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Scholar to Ireland, S. Korea, Colombia and Latvia, her solo and group works have toured spanning five continents including the Spoleto Festival in Italy, FILO Festival Brazil, Performing America’s Tour Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay, the O’ Shaughnessy Women of Substance Series in St. Paul, Jacob’s Pillow Festival, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Emerson Majestic and Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and NY City Center Fall for Dance Festival. “She appeared to transcend the material world and enter the realm of pure spirit...wondrous choreographic metamorphosis.” – The New York Times
Lily Henley
Lily Henley is a Sefardi-American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, known for her synergistic exploration of American, Celtic and Sefardi folk traditions. She has performed extensively as a solo artist across North America, and with others including Grammy nominated artists Rushad Eggleston, David Krakauer, The Duhks, Brittany Haas, and Irish guitar virtuoso John Doyle. The Guardian called Lily’s 2022 album ‘Oras Dezaoradas’ a “fascinating and beautiful release”. The album, a collection of brand new Judeo-Spanish Folk Songs exploring transience, heartbreak, autonomy and change, was released to enthusiastic reviews and awarded Top of the World by Songlines Magazine. Lily was recognized as a 2019 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow Finalist in Music/Sound from The New York Foundation for the Arts, and is the first recipient of a Fulbright grant to France in the discipline of World Music.
Féile na bealtaine - a feast for the senses.
In Ireland, the first of May heralds the season of Bealtaine - the cross quarter day that marks the midway point between the Spring equinox and the Summer solstice.
Bealtaine is a liminal time when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is thin - a time of draíocht and enchantment. We celebrate the transition from winter to summer, from the dark to the bright half of the year - Giamos to Samos.
The powerful place associated with the fire festival of Bealtaine is the Hill of Uisneach. Some of the ancient verses known as the 'Dindshenchas' (Lore of Places) tell us that the first fire was lit here by the druid Míde (Meath). From ancient times until the arrival of Christianity in Ireland, tribal leaders, chiefs and High Kings would gather at Uisneach in ritual. Prior to the lighting of the main fire, hearth fires were extinguished all over the land and torches from the main bonfire would pass from village to village where each community would light their own bonfires.
Uisneach is also known as belly button of Ireland - the sacred centre or axis mundi. Is is the resting place of the great Soverignty goddess Éiru of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Éire, the irish word for Ireland comes from Éiru herself.
In many traditions and cultures Bealtaine is a time of divine union and fertility and incorporates rituals associated with the sun and the return of new life. We welcome the masculine energies of samos to ensure the flowering, ripening and harvesting of the seeds sown in the darker time of giamos.
Sometimes we forget that we are an integral part of the aliveness of the universe. The gateway to this aliveness is through our sensory perception of the world, and our sensory participation with the world. The portal of Bealtaine ushers in the sensorial season of blossoming, aliveness, fullness, risk and opening. As we move with the rhythms of nature we can see the dappled sunlight on the green leaves, we smell the perfumed fragrance of violets and hawthorn blossoms, we hear the pulse of aliveness in the air, we taste the wild herbs and we feel the sap rising in our cells.
Right now as a human species we are being reminded on a daily basis of the fragility of this place we call home. In many indigenous cultures there was no word for “nature” because they did not experience wilderness as some “thing” separate from themselves. We seem to have lost that understanding but maybe it’s time to return to our senses.
I have been feeling a pull to do something different – to create an immersive experience that invites us to gather kin and kindred and rekindle our relationship to our language and cultural heritage.
We are so excited to curate this special celebration of Bealtaine on Irish Language Day | Féile na Gaeilge at Irish Arts Centre.
I’d be honoured if you could join us.
beannachtaí
More About Hedge School
Hedge School is a virtual homeschool rooted in Ireland that invites people around the world on a collective learning experience to find our shared humanity and resource our possibility as global citizens. Hedge School is an Irish drum beat with a global resonance. 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...
