This year we will have a number of workshops including B(l)ending Reality green screen, all day children’s Forest School and the Sunday GeoWalk.
Saturday 25th |Clowning Reality @5pm | Danaghers’s Hotel
In today’s topsy turvy world, it’s not so easily to maintain a sense of equilibrium. Yet we have a secret weapon inside of us, our sense of humor, our funny! As life forces pull us in many directions at once, discover and develop tools of resilience and equanimity. We will develop methods to tame the 8 Worldly winds ––praise, blame, success, failure, pleasure, pain, gain, loss. If these winds are blowing you out of balance and sometimes controlling your life’s directions, this workshop will provide tools to re-gain control when the winds start blowing.
By inviting our ’funny’ into these worldly winds, we can develop methods of embodying and disarming these energies. Create tools of tricksterdom, perhaps even find delight in the conundrums that life sometimes throws at us. Place awareness on your sense of humor and transform that into meaningless and meaningful expression. Awaken your playfulness in a mature way, develop the power to transform the energies that create disturbance and disconnect. Although you might imagine that exploring your sense of funny is a frivolous pursuit, when you really connect, you are sourcing the energies that come from your deepest sense of self.
If you imagine that Tools of Tricksterdom implies smart witty language, you will discover that a more useful tool is a well-timed glance, or a subtle gesture. We will be working in the nonverbal realm of positive humor, rather than with spoken words and their sometimes destructive/making-fun-of humor. The workshop’s explorations and practices draw from physical theater practices, clown improvisations, elements from butoh dance, qi gong and feldenkreis movement.
Saturday 25th |B(l)ending Reality @5pm | Danaghers’s Hotel
Using generated graphics – we will take people and put them into places that are not real… or, are they?
Using AI generated graphics and (hopefully) real humans along with a green screen and chromakey technology – we aim to take and make art, reality, illusion, confusion, ineptness and incompetence – while having lots of fun!
About Chris Reina
Chris Reina has been involved in education since 2002, technology since 1981 and Making since 1971. (You do the maths). He is part of MakerMeet.ie – who deliver Maker-led, project-based S.T.E.A.M. workshops nationwide to primary, secondary, third-level and other institutions.
He feels passionately that education is the most important thing in the world and that teaching using Maker skills is the most rewarding job there is.
Chris loves cats, kayaking, kite-flying, steampunk, pedantic semantics and knowing the meanings of ligatures, aglets, gallibanders and lexiphanic.
Saturday 25th | Forest School 10-5pm | The Crossroads Centre & Cong Woods
This year while the parents are taking their minds for a gallop in Cong their children will be learning bushcraft skills in Cong Woods. Drop off is from 9.30am in The Crossroads Centre and collection from 5pm. This is an all weather event so good rain gear and wellies/good footwear are recommended. Lunch will be provided. Morning will be bushcraft skills with the afternoon focusing on crafts.
Registration is essential and under 5s need to be accompanied by an adult.
Sunday 26th |GeoWalk 11-1pm | The Abbey, Cong Village
The last event at CongRegation this year will be GeoWalk by a geologist from the Joyce Country GeoPark. Mixing myth, storytelling with explanations of rock formations this walk will begin at the Abbey in Cong Village at 11am. The woods between Cong and Clonbur are home to an amazing karst landscape. Limestone is soluble to acid water (like rain). Over time cracks become fissures and entire cave systems are formed, like the Pigeon Hole in Cong Woods. Expect surprises like fossilised coral to how the village location was once in warmer climates millions of year ago.
For more information on the Joyce Country & Western Lakes GeoPark Project check out https://joycecountrygeoparkproject.ie/en/