Irish Cultural (Re)Connection, Embodied Awareness, & Playful Experimentation:
Aiming to Deconstruct Empire* Both Within and Around Us
Weaving Irish history, language, and art with present-day political, social, and personal experiences of North America.
Rooted in play, body awareness, and nuanced reflection we re-knit caring relationships and ways of being.
Aiming to dismantle systems of violence and oppression especially those we benefit from.
Our Projects
We facilitate cultural (re)connection experiences that centre playful exploration and embodied experiences, paired with an honest assessment of our history and contemporary context.
Currently our work focuses on Irish language learning, songs, and honest retelling of history. In the future we hope to expand our work to include storytelling, dancing, weaving, basketry, stone masonry, and more.
As members of the Irish Diaspora in North America we believe it is essential to root (re)connection in an awareness of settler colonialism, our role in ongoing colonization of Indigenous land, and solidarity with people resisting colonization worldwide. If our (re)connection does not engage with this truth,
it is disrespectful to our ancestors who maintained these practices through colonization
re-entrenches us in our own comfort, power, and whiteness (for those of us who are not mixed race)
maintains alliances with ongoing and violent processes of dispossession
Our aim is to respectfully reengage with our cultural traditions to gain roots and stability so that we may face deeper, harder conversations and build the relationships we need to undo Empire and settler colonialism.
We’re excited to see what we can do together as a network of people working toward similar aims. If any of this resonates with you we would love to walk this path together. Please reach out.
If you are interested in this path of (re)connection we would be delighted to work with you.
Our Foundation
Romanticization
It's important that when we engage in cultural re-connection we recognize we aren't engaging with a static and idealized version of who we were and who Irish people are now. We hold these truths as central in our work: the land, culture and people of Ireland have shifted while we’ve been dislocated, the process of emigration has changed us, and our incorporation into and enactment of settler colonialism has changed us as well. We recognize and engage with our new and complex identities as Irish diaspora settlers in what is commonly known as North America.
Colonization
Our work is rooted in an awareness of capitalism, Empire, whiteness, white supremacy culture, colonization, and settler colonialism. With this foundation we aim to cultivate solidarity and new kinship structures, so that together we can work to dismantle these systems of violence and oppression.
Response-abilty
As folks of Irish ancestry and members of the North American Irish diaspora it’s essential we recognize our complicity and participation in settler colonialism. Ireland was both colonized by the British and used as a test site for British imperialism before spreading throughout the world. Given our relationship with this history we have additional responsibilities to refuse participation and enactment of this violence on others. There are lineages we can follow that worked to refuse complicity and undo these violent and oppressive systems and structures. We can choose other pathways and futures.
Pleasure & Play
Our ways of being in relationship with each other and the spaces we create, hold powerful opportunities for transformation. Play and pleasure are potent in their potential for liberation.
Most learning spaces do not centre pleasure and excluded play. When talking about history or our every day experinces sexuality is often ignored or hidden. We believe that this exclusion is done on purpose and in service of Empire. We embrace pleasure, play, and sexuality in an effort to celebrate our full selves and our connection to greater humanity.
Solidarity
Our work is done in solidarity with Land Back, Black Lives Matter, Trans folks, Disabled folks, the LGBTQIA communities, Sex Workers, Folks who are working poor and working class, fat liberation, neurodivergent brilliance, abolition, Youth, and people struggling against colonization and occupation everywhere.
Accessiblity
We strive to make all of our offerings accessible in a number of ways including with captions, sliding scale, image descriptions, and more. Instead of having a checklist of things of tasks we accomplish, we base accessibility around the needs of our relationship. If you join us, or want to work with us, we will work to accommodate your needs and support you as best we can. We’re striving to follow the lead and learn from disabled and neurodivergent people and activists. We deeply desire to create spaces in which barriers to particpation are minimize or removed.
Accountability
We make mistakes. It’s part of our learning process. We’ve already made several and we’re working with the folks who helped us see them to adapt and do better. We deeply appreciate the time, care, trust, and effort they have gifted us in their feedback.
As we work with you we strive to be accountable to your feedback and experiences. We are committed to listening to you and adapting our process, offerings, courses, and ways of being as we learn how to do and be better. We deeply appreciate your thoughts and feelings. They help us support one another and navigate new and otherwise ways of being.
*For us, Empire encompasses both the historic process of Imperialism and the resulting present-day systems of oppression, including capitalism, the carceral state, white supremacy culture, racism, heterosexism, ableism, eugenics, misogyny, whorephobia, transphobia, fatphobia, rape culture, and more. The structures that uphold Empire today range from the concrete (like police, prisons, class divisions, nation-states, the World Bank/International Monetary Fund/World Trade Organization, etc) to the conceptual (like productivity, scarcity, urgency, and more)…