Tipperary eco village to be at the heart of Electric Picnic once again

Cultivate, a sustainability co-operative based in the Cloughjordan Ecovillage, is returning to Electric Picnic this year to power Global Green.

Global Green is a pop-up ecovillage where art, activism and performance converge to inspire action, creativity and connection.

As the conscious heartbeat of Electric Picnic, Global Green is home to artists, activists, makers, musicians, foodies, poets and 50 groups from across Ireland.

400 people will travel with the group to the festival.

300 will travel to work and 100 to perform, with roughly two dozen from Cloughjordan and elsewhere in north Tipperary travelling, including many second generation participants, whose parents have worked with the group at the festival.

The main tent, the Elements of Change talks tent, will see discussions and activities on regenerative, resilient living and on solidarity with Palestine including with its farmers.

They say building food sovereignty is key, from Honouring the Dexter, an installation and set of activities on the native Irish cattle breed, to decolonising our farming and building our food sovereignty.

Resilient community living is also expressed through appropriate technology from maker space stalls to community bike powered apple pressing of EcoVillage windfall apples, in the build up to the group’s apple festival, Féile na nÚll, in the EcoVillage on September 19.

The organising team for Global Green are Cultivate staff.

Cultivate has its office in the WeCreate Community Enterprise Centre in Cloughjordan EcoVillage.

Davie Philip and Ollie Moore are the main curators of the main talks tent.

Speaking on Global Green, Ollie spoke with the Tipperary Star about the excitement the group is feeling on the run up to the festival, and what it means to return to Stradbally again this year.

“It started quite small, and has grown kind of with the festival. Now we have four areas, we bring about 400 people to the festival, and there’s about 50 separate elements to what we do there, even though it’s quite small, by the standards of an 80,000 person festival, every area is fully packed, and fully informed.

“It’s great, because, we do most of the work to get it set up in WeCreate, so there’s great buzz about there when people are painting and building and all of that, it’s just constantly a dozen people trying to do bits of work to get everything ready.”

Festival-goers can expect to see many from the First Friday, the monthly pop-up event, with folk, poetry and trad in the evening of the first Friday of every month, in the food hub/Bay 1 in the WeCreate Community Enterprise Centre in Cloughjordan, at Electric Picnic.

Some of the acts that have been announced to perform at the festival include Nat Stone, Nick Ward, Sarah Szoucs, Shay Hannon, Sol Chase, Mel White (Poetry) Alys Taylor (poetry) Anatta Patrick, AaronOscar (DJ) Ruari-Santiago MacBride (DJ) Ollie Moore (DJ) and Majella O’Connor (yoga teacher).

Other sections at Global Green include the Nature Tent; Crucial Space, a pop-up arts and music studio hosted by Crucial Moves; the Solar Salon; the Community Garden; and the Global Green Food Hub.

You can check out Global Green this weekend at Electric Picnic.