Edith Wilkins Streetchildren Centre, Darjeeling, India

During the "Monsoon Wedding" trip to Darjeeling earlier this month, we were lucky enough to get to visit Edith Wilkins uplifting Streetchildren Centre - of which my cousin, Emma O'Brien (the Bride), is Assistant Director. After reading Slumdog Millionaire, and seeing the movie, I was expecting something grim - but Edith's happy centre is far from grim - as you can see from these pictures, it's full of light and joy (thanks to cousin eile, Niamh ni Aodha for the pix). But I guess these are far from the conditions these kids have been rescued from.

Edith Wilkins is an incredible Cork woman, who trained as a nurse in Cork with Emma's mother, Eileen, after which she headed off to India "for a few years". Famous last words - that was 26 years ago! She initally worked for Goal in Calcutta. In the meantime she set up The Hope Foundation for Streetchildren in Calcutta, worked with Goal in Sudan (among other places), where she bumped into her old friend Mother Theresa (they both looked at each other and exclaimed "What are you doing here?"). Edith most recently moved to Darjeeling where she set up the wonderful new centre which we (about 30 of us, from Ireland), visited, as part of the Emma O'Brien/Roshan Rai wedding party. Oh, and Edith has also fostered 20 children (she has grandchildren now), and adopted two - the lovely Omar and Krishma. Krishma was one of Emma's beautiful flowergirls. In Edith's lively centre on the day we vistied, leading up to Emma and Roshan's "Dhog Bet", and wedding, the kids were singing, playing the guitar, playing games, and chatting to us about their schooldays and their lives. They are a super, happy, well cared-for bunch, thanks to Edith's initiatives, and of course the support of Irish Aid, fundraising, and private Irish donations. For example, while I was there - one well-known Irish businessman sent over a considerable sum of money with some of the wedding guests to pay for a heart operation needed by a child in Calcutta. Edith's foundation was keen not to waste even one penny in bank charges, so the donation was delivered by hand. That's pretty typical of how this inspiring NGO works. Check it out: www.edithwilkins.org.

Darjeeling - en route to Rishikesh...

Had an amazing time here in the foothills of the Himalayas at Emma & Roshan's Dog Bhet and wedding (Aug 6 - 8) - loads of images and stories to post up of all the fascinating people I've met here so far, but it's probably going to have to wait until I get home in a couple of weeks... So watch this space for the latest on an Indian adventure...

U2's Contraption and Croke Park Gig, July 24th, Croke Park

I woz there! With my iphone - but without zoom. Magnificent show - Catherine Owens, Willie Williams (show director); Mark Fisher; Bruce Ramus (lighting designer). How did they dream up that intergalactic spaceship
contraption?!! I would love to know. 

The Touring Experiment: Dance Case Study

Check out the interesting Dance Case Study I conducted with Dance Theatre of Ireland on the 2007 national tour of their show "Slow Down" - you can download it from the Arts Council website here:

http://www.artscouncil.ie/en/areas-of-work/touringpolicy.aspx

It's one of the reports (including theatre, music, dance, and visual art), that helped to formulate the new Arts Council Policy: "A future for arts touring in Ireland 2010-2015".

Skellig Michael "Jaunt"

We were looking forward to a quaint Sunday jaunt out to Skellig Michael, County Kerry (after the opening of ART 250 Kerry the night before), to explore the 6th century monastic UNESCO world heritage site. Well, we were in for a bit of a surprise!

Sean Feehan’s boat pulled out from Ballinskelligs, and soon enough it felt like we were being thrown around in a washing machine while having buckets of sea water flung at us - AND being simultaneously disembowelled of anything we ever ate. That lasted for about an hour, before we finally pulled up to the mighty rock. We looked like we had been thrown overboard. But luckily, the sun came out, warmed us up (we were shaking), and dried us off. Oh yeah, this is a traditional pilgrimage site, and this experience is all part of it (we were told). THEN there were the 580 vertiginous steps to climb, up to the monastic site itself. We practically crawled up the incline, but it was all worth it once we got there. The gorgeous puffins on the way cheered us up too. The only other thing it reminded me of are the spectacular rockhewn churches in Lalibela, Ethiopia – also a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Up there, we sat and chatted with Eamonn, the guide at the top who explained the amazing sculptural beehive structures to us; the fact that they were built without mortar; the diet of the 12 hungry monks who spent their lives praying for people on the mainland; the monk-beds; their lavatory system, and how eventually, in the 12th century they moved back onto the mainland and set up the Augustinian Monastery in Ballinskelligs. Then there were the pilgrimages and the lighthouse families. A spectacular, spiritual place. We got comfortable and could have chilled out there a lot longer (or perhaps avoided the boat-trip back forever) but – Sean Feehan the boatman was waiting for us down below, and we had to hurry. Wisely, we didn’t eat the sandwiches we had brought with us. There was only one way home... I won’t go into the details. On a positive note, it was amazing to pass Little Skellig with its bird colonies before hitting the open sea again.

As we pulled back in the harbour at Ballinskelligs, Sean Feehan informed us that the boat-journey was considered to be part of the pilgrimage, and no wonder the monks only came off the island once a year when they lived there. Now he tells us! We were pale, our hair was covered in vomit (the glamour!), we nodded in agreement. A fantastic, if somewhat visceral experience... & we get a plenary indulgence for that - which could come in handy to cash in against future misdemeanours. Good to have up your sleeve - just in case!

PS that's the amazing artist Hughie O'Donoghue ducking into a beehive hut in the last photograph, bottom right. Now how did he sneak into my photo-frame?!!!

......"But for the magic that takes you out, far out of this time and this world, there is Skellig Michael, ten miles off the Kerry Coast, shooting straight up 700 feet out of the Atlantic. Whoever has not stood in the graveyards at the summit of that cliff, among the beehive dwellings and their beehive oratory, does not know Ireland through and through, It is the beauty of Ireland that has made us what we are." From the "Beauty of Ireland" by George Bernard Shaw

Cill Rialaig Artist's Retreat, Ballinskelligs, County Kerry

ART 250 Kerry on Saturday night gave me the perfect excuse to finally check out Noelle Campbell-Sharp’s visionary Cill Rialaig artist’s retreat, way out on the edge of Europe, in Ballinskelligs, County Kerry. I had been planning on doing this for a long time, having gazed so often at the video of the rural idyll in her Urban Retreat Gallery on Dublin’s Grand Canal Quay, and heard of it from the artists who exhibit there. What a dream-project! But the thing about the amazing Noelle Campbell-Sharp is that she has turned the dream into a reality. Seeing the reality of the wonderful project she has created out on spectacular Bolus Head is believing. Like the mighty Atlantic itself though, it’s hard to capture the scope and scale of it in words, or within the frame of a photograph. So these are only tiny corners of it… You’ll have to imagine the rest – or go visit!

2,500 international artists so far have enjoyed residencies in these restored cottages, which were once a functioning village before they were abandoned in famine times. Resurrected since 1991, now these little homesteads are once again hives of concentrated activity. But in this incarnation, the activity is creation, as their inhabitants either drink in the landscape around them, or as Julie Strasheim from Colorado was doing when we called in to see her - work studiously on a planned project. Coincidentally for me, as I am heading off to Darjeeling very soon, Julie was studiously ignoring the stupendous County Kerry landscape to paint Rajasthani musicians. The portraits are earmarked to raise money for schools in Rajasthan. Julie also had Hindi books out on the couch in her cottage – getting ‘in the zone’ of her paintings, she was learning the language with a view to visiting India at the next opportunity.

A lot of the artists – like Italian sculptor Giancarlo Scapin on this particular day - go out wandering around the magnificent Bolus Head for inspiration. Knocking on a few more doors we found Spanish artist Mercedes Paz Esparza (from Seville) at work with her daughter, Clara, in a cottage she had made cosy with the aromas of home-cooking. Mercedes, who is also a champion parachutist, was working on series of Modigliani-style women.

In the meantime a freelance photographer pulled up to take some dramatic shots of Una Kavanagh, www.unakavanagh.ie (who had come down with me from the big smoke, or should I say, the “Fair City” to load up on some Cill Rialaig inspiration). Here she is, with her ART 250 painting at the edge of the vertiginous cliff directly across the road from the cottages with its breathtaking, backdrop out across the bay.

Having discovered the village and its history, involving seanachai Sheain Ui Chonaill, who lived there in the 1920’s, that evening we went to the launch of ART 250 Kerry at the Cill Rialaig Project’s Ballinskelligs Art Café and Art Centre. We dined on Ivor O’Connor’s fine cuisine, and tried to guess who the anonymous paintings were by. We knew there was a Hughie O’Donoghue – he was in the room with his wife Clare and daughter Katy, who works for the project; a Martin FInnin; a Barrie Cooke; a Giancarlo Scapin; a Susan Morley (also there, www.susanmorley.ie) and more among them. Oh and a Donovan. Local singer Clare Horgan (www.clarehorgan.com), regaled us in her bluesy voice – prompting me to get a copy of her CD “The Stolen Child”. The singing continued in Rosie’s Pub, where we took out Clare’s songbook and all had a go. Clare kindly helped me get a party-piece together for my cousin’s forthcoming wedding in Darjeeling, and had us all rehearsing “Will you go Lassie, go” with the song-sheet. So – from Ballinskelligs to the foothills of the Himalaya’s. But not without a visceral jaunt to the mighty Skellig Michael beforehand – which is all part of the Cill Rialaig experience if you ask me. More of that anon…