Féile Bríde 2011 – Seeds of Change

Photo: Irish Seed Savers Association

Saturday, 5 February 2011, Derby House Hotel, Kildare

The symbolism of Brigid giving her father’s sword to a poor man seeking alms is ever more relevant in a world where the annual arms budget exceeds $1,500 billion. That spending represents food taken out of our mouths, particularly those of the poor. And food was the focus of this year’s Féile.

Though food may be a hobby or a profession for some, securing enough to feed a family is a matter of life and death for many more. Remarkably, the constant reality of a billion people hungry in our world has failed to trigger a response similar to that in the banking crisis, where billions of Euros were instantly found for a ‘bail-out’!

Yet few subjects have such importance, generate such interest or evoke such passions as food: it is spoken about, thought about, written about, fought about, discussed, eaten, enjoyed, denied, controlled and wasted – as well as being the subject of multiple media articles and programmes. Books such as Felicity Lawrence’s Eat your Heart Out and Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved spell out the inequities of modern industrialised food-production and consumption patterns. Food is controlled by multinational corporations, manipulated, genetically modified or used as a weapon, while biodiversity continues to be lost at an alarming rate.

But there is also a hopeful ‘counter-revolution’, as small producers continue to play a crucial role in production in ‘Developing Countries’ and many people in the Northern Hemisphere are returning to the “oldfashioned” practice of growing our own food. Is this the answer? This is one of the questions we will address during the day.

And while the Féile did not feature the singing of ‘Food, Glorious Food’, the ‘Oliver’ theme was taken up in a theatre piece called ‘More’, developed and presented by young people from Coláiste Éinde under the astute guidance and direction of Pete Mullineaux.

Alais Morindat from Tanzania brought the unique perspective of the Masai pastoralist to the table, and Michael Kelly, author and founder of Grow it Yourself, talked about a movement that is retrieving the ‘art of growing’, once taken for granted in Ireland.

Discussion followed, on how the local and the global perspectives are linked and how each relates to food sovereignty/security. As usual, music was interwoven throughout the day, including an end-of-day miscellany and seisiún.

There was, in other words, something for everyone!

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For further details and the full programme for the day download our Féile Bríde 2011 brochure.

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Admission €12

Concession €7 (students, unwaged)