Cruinniú Lughnasa

Rekindling Ancient Ways for Decolonial Futures

A five-day gathering grounded in ancestral knowledge, cultural repair, and the living, mythic land of northwest Donegal. This is not just a festival, but an invitation to remember, repair, and reclaim.

Bringing together heritage knowledge tenders, language activists, song weavers, storytellers, and local community, we will explore how traditional Gaelic lifeways can nourish pathways of decolonisation, rewilding, and cultural and ecological regeneration.

Rooted on 43 upland acres stewarded by a seventh-generation farmer using regenerative agriculture practices, this gathering offers a space to unlearn separation, re-weave our relationship with land and culture, and dream into being new/old ways of living in right relation with the Earth.

Workshops & Offerings

Each day will offer a mix of structured and open sessions. Some workshops are drop-in; others will require sign-up. Participants are also encouraged to host offerings... a story, a skill-share, a circle, a song.

Confirmed offerings include:

🪨 Tigh n’Alluis (sweat house) construction – Louise Price (Tyrconnell Stone Festival)

🔥 Teine Èiginn: Collectively exploring and reviving the old traditions of fire – Aoife Ní Lodain

🐇 Rabbit skin tanning – Jane Robertson (Oak and Smoke Tannery)

🌿 Natural dyes, inks, pigments and paints – Malú Colorín

🐎 Working Ponies; workshops & demonstrations – Shane

🦴 Bone craft – Peter Michael Bauer

🧺 Basket weaving – Lauren Ó Droma

🌰 Eel skin tanning – Lugh Ní hAodhagáin

🌱 Regenerative agriculture, decolonisation, land back, rewilding discussions

📖 Scéalaíocht & Gaeilge – Aodh Mac Gairbhea

🌸 Reclaiming menarche rites of passage, experiential animism, distillation & plant journeying – Sky-Maria Buitenhaus

🗣️ Amhránaíocht le Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh

🌼 Luibeanna Leighis – Margaret Chítí Ní Bhaoill

🪵 Pedal-powered lathe – Dee Synnott

🦌 Slí na Fiadh – Lugh Ní hAodhagáin & Ian Ó Droma

🧶 Working with Wool - Erin Fahey

This is an open learning space. Emergent knowledge, community-led offerings, and spontaneous co-creation are central to the spirit of this gathering.

This gathering is a call to deepen into ancestral memory and local knowledges in service of mutual healing and collective care. Through hands-on workshops, storytelling, ecological restoration, and communal learning, we will reawaken skills and values that colonisation, extraction, and modernity have sought to erase.

We honour Irish traditions not as relics, but as living practices of resistance, resilience, and relationship.