Dublin - Event Notice
Thursday January 01 1970

AFRI Hedge School 2010

dublin | miscellaneous | event notice

Monday October 04, 2010 14:37

by Afri

Food Sovereignty - Rooting out the Causes of Global Hunger

A unique blend of CONVERSATION, DEBATE. MUSIC, FUN and FOOD!

The Afri Hedge School 2010 is organised in collaboration with Kimmage Development Studies Centre (KDSC), which is particularly appropriate as both Afri and KDSC celebrate our 35th anniversaries this year.

Speakers at this year’s event will include former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday, Alan Matthews from the Economics Department at Trinity College Dublin, and Clare O’Grady Walshe, who will launch a pamphlet which she has written dealing with issues of food insecurity and loss of biodiversity.

Afri has adapted the concept of the Hedge School to reflect on contemporary issues of injustice and oppression. Our first Hedge School took place in County Tyrone in 1998, evoking the memory of a time of colonial oppression and prohibition in our history. Hedge Schools were places of learning, continuity and resistance and emerged out of the Penal Laws of 1695. We harness that memory as we try to recover solidarity with oppressed and excluded people, especially people who are denied their most fundamental human rights today.

Hedge Schools were set up wherever a safe place could be found: in the shelter of ruined houses, in dry ditches, by the roadside, in a barn or ‘on the sunny side of a thorn hedge’.

A poem by John O’ Hagan captures the atmosphere of the Hedge School:

‘…crouching ‘neath the sheltering hedge
Or stretching on ferns
The teacher and his pupils met felonishly to learn’.

The Penal Laws were repealed in 1782 but many parents continued to send their children to Hedge Schools up until the 1840s, the period in which Ireland was devastated by the Great Famine, a reality that faces millions of people in today’s world. This year’s Hedge School will focus on the fundamental right to food and discuss the importance of food sovereignty as a potential precondition for food security and tackling world hunger.

Admission for the full conference: 10.00 EUR (students/unwaged: 5.00 EUR) – The admission fee includes lunch (soup & bread) and a delicious dinner prepared with local and organic food.