400 events to savour at Cork festival of learning

ON APRIL 10, the 19th Cork Lifelong Learning Festival will kick off a week of more than 400 events around Cork city.

Celebrating learning in its broadest sense, at its core is community, and that sense of connection, opportunity, and belonging that is generated when people sit side by side, engaged together.

“The genesis of the festival was a simple one”, explains Lifelong Festival Chairman Willie McAuliffe.

“During discussions for Cork City - Imagine Our Future in 2004, it was mooted to have a section on learning. So, a small committee was assembled and we launched a two-day festival with the objective of redefining learning for people, taking it out of formal institutions into non-formal settings.

“There was no specific target group. The brief was wide open. The hope was that people would explore and redefine what learning was, and could be, for them.

“Any group of people coming together with elements of learning, whether its singing, playing boules, or crochet, qualified.”

While at the heart of the Lifelong Learning Festival is the celebration of the learning that is happening in little groups all over the city, the tentacles of that magic reach far beyond those small gatherings, and the festival itself, out into their individual communities.

Moreover, these threads are woven into the very fabric of Cork city, and stretch out, not only to connect Cork with the other six Irish Cities of Learning but, globally, with all the UNESCO-designated Learning Cities around the world.

Being the first Irish city to be named as a UNESCO Learning City, and one of the first cities to receive the award at the UNESCO International conference in Mexico over a decade ago, was not only recognition, on a world stage, for the incredible work being done by local communities at grass-roots level, it was also a massive achievement for a small city like Cork.

Cork subsequently hosted the international conference in 2017.

“In the early years of the festival, we had no funding and so we spent a lot of time promoting it and seeking out interested groups,” explains Willie.

While we still don’t have much funding today, the festival is self-generating.

“A big element of it is confidence-building, bringing self-esteem to groups, and impressing on them that they are part of this bigger community.”

Established 18 years ago, the Learning Neighbourhoods initiative grew out of this desire to connect groups to the collective spirit.

Norma Browne is the Learning Neighbourhoods co-ordinator and works alongside Cork City Learning co-ordinator Denis Barrett and festival coordinator, Siubhan McCarthy.

Based in the adult education department of UCC, Norma is part of a unique collaboration between the main Festival partners of UCC, MTU, ETB and Cork City Council.

“There are currently six active Learning Neighbourhoods in Cork, with a seventh coming on board soon,” says Norma.

“Each neighbourhood has its own committee, made up of individuals and business owners who are interested in putting on learning-based initiatives specific to the needs of their area.

“Representatives from each Learning Neighbourhoods then feed into a steering committee, presenting the events and ideas that are happening each month, so that there is a shared collective experience from which people can draw.”

The MTU-facilitated Cork Access Network is another element of the Lifelong Learning Festival and allows businesses in the city the opportunity to share with each other how their employees learn within a commercial setting.

Lord Mayor of Cork, Cllr Kieran McCarthy, himself a self-confessed lifelong learner, said the festival is firmly rooted in the city’s “sense of identity”.

He added: “It brings many ideas and events together, encouraging all of us to live up to the Festival motto of Investigate, Participate and Celebrate.”

Since its inception, one of the annual participants in the festival is Douglas Young At Heart, established 22 years ago by powerhouse Phil Goodman. Not only does the Young At Heart group organise wonderful social events that give joy and connection to the people of Douglas every day of the week, like Sunday afternoon tea-dances, kurling for disability groups, and bingo, they also host knitting, jewellery-making, and weekly, Tai Chi classes, are the designated organisation for the seniors alert scheme for Douglas and surrounding areas, organise an anonymous weekly food drop to families in need, and manage the ‘care-ring’, where each week 10 volunteers call 220 people who are confined to home.

“The Lifelong Festival is hugely important,” says Karina Healy, Co-ordinator of The Lantern Project in Nano Nagle Place.

Everything we do in the Lantern Project, in terms of learning opportunities, is focused on wellbeing. It’s 100% relationship-based, creating events that focus on learning in a safe, kind, creative space. A space where friendships can be formed.

Karina insists that while the events cultivate the learning of practical skills (like cooking, the art of story-telling, music and meditation, how to create art), they also work on a deeper level of mindfulness, connection, and belonging.

When Denis Barrett invited her to Limerick last year to visit a similar project to theirs, Karina recognised the invisible threads that bonded the two cities.

“I realised that there really is a bigger picture going on. The Lantern Project is part of the South Parish Learning neighbourhood, and that community is part of the broader community of Cork. And beyond, in a shared-island experience.”

Karina acknowledges how crucial this learning environment has been to the people in the South Parish.

“I know that what we do here is keeping people well.”

“Loneliness is the biggest epidemic we are facing. It’s at health crisis level.”

A lot of people that come here are in a vulnerable, fragile state. There’s active upset going on in their lives and they need to touch base on a regular basis, to tell their story.

“We are like family. It’s all about feeling connected and feeling safe. Cultivating a sense of belonging could literally just be a chat in the corridor on the way to the toilet, or sitting together, nattering while learning to crochet.”

Karina’s daughter, Hannah Healy, is working in Cork prison, as part of the ETB-funded adult-education programme in the Irish Prison Service. Working alongside art teacher Danny Sexton, students designed, built, and decorated bodhrans and then, under teachers Paul La Rocque and Hannah, embarked on a six-week course immersed in learning the basics of traditional Irish music.

“There has been huge pride in the whole creative process by the students, and in the finished product,” says Hannah.

In the words of one student, “the wood and skin create a very distinctive sound. A sound from nature. The bodhran suggests something very Irish. There is a loneliness about it, but loneliness can be beautiful.”

These exquisite works of art will be exhibited in the Nano Nagle Place for the duration of the festival. And, on the final night of the festival, The Lantern Project, Nano Nagle Place, in collaboration with Crowleys Music Centre, will present the Songs of Hope concert at which one of the bodhrans will be played.

In the words of Lord Mayor of Cork, Councillor Kieran McCarthy: “You are more than the guardians of lifelong learning. You are the guardians of the essence of the city. You are what makes us tick.”

As part of the Lifelong Learning Festival, and in collaboration with Douglas Library, Linda Kenny, Alf McCarthy and Maurice Healy, will present their hugely popular Down Memory Lane in Douglas Library on April 10 at 11am Come early.

The Cork Lifelong Learning Festival runs from April 10 to 17 in venues across Cork city. www.corklearningcity.ie