St Patrick’s Day a time to go green
THIS week CoDesRes shares how Cahersiveen is using community events like their St Patrick’s Day parade to encourage engagement with the environment and the sustainable development goals, a core part of CoDesRes’s work.
Last year’s St Patrick’s Day Parade with 26 floats, was the largest it had been in years, feedback showed that the themes; SDG 14 - Life Below Water and SDG 15 - Life on Land, helped people focus on their floats as they are open to interpretation e.g. Dark Skies, Wild Atlantic Way, Fishing, Conservation (animals, landscapes and biodiversity), Farming to name a few with the only limit being our imagination.
Last year’s winners, Puffins Nursery walking group the Hungry Caterpillar, including the full life cycle, SDG 15 Life on Land showed how we can lay the foundations of environmental stewardship and activism in the very young. By building an interest and enjoyment through playful and creative education about the physical world early on an awareness of our place in the planetary ecosystem is created and appreciated.
But it wasn’t not only an engagement with the embedded themes that had value. Cahersiveen has a unique night-time event - putting our 30ft snake puppet, that leads the parade, to bed. Made from recycled materials; old coal bags, old piping and willow, our night-time parade means families with small children and those who don’t go to the pub can co-create an experience that contributes to a community’s cohesiveness.
Everybody’s involvement and enthusiasm made it great - the community that plays together, stays together; or at least can come together to collaborate or address shared aims.
Why does this matter?
Relationships will be increasingly critical as we experience the diverse effects of human-driven climate change. Some groups working in local organisations valued the opportunity to work together differently and although it took time, energy and commitment they felt the ‘payback’ was worth it.
Those who experienced the festival reported that they want to get more involved in local events. Inclusion in community events not only contributes to social resilience but also can enable the development of more tangible skills e.g. project management and production skills. Self-organisation or the ability for a system to change through new structures and behaviours, is one of the strongest forms of resilience (Meadows, 2008).
A resilient system portraying adaptive behaviour has the potential to evolve new responses that will influence the system and enable it to sustain aspects it has never encountered before. Rather than DIY and doing it yourself, it’s much more fun to do it with others (DIWO, Furtherfield, 2006) our resilience could depend on it.
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