Water Street Association and Cúige gather for Summer Solstice
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Maria Golubieva, Trevor Hughes, Natalia Golubieva, Katiana Vakonova, Bertille De Lestrade, Rachel Cassen, Vincent Sykes and Mariza Halliday in Castlepollard last week.Image 2 of 10
Vincent Bellot and Antoin Deregnaucourt at the Water Street Association event last week.Image 3 of 10
Krispin Krzywanski and Saida Kalinoba from Mullingar.Image 4 of 10
Rimvydas Kalinovas and Kalinova.Image 5 of 10
Maedhbh Hughes performed live on the evening.Image 6 of 10
Andrea Cullen from Cúige with Máire Ní Bhuacháin.Image 7 of 10
Aoife Raleigh, Dysart, and Olive McDonagh, Delvin.Image 8 of 10
Ethan Scally, Tanya Cullen and Tara Cullen from Mullingar.Image 9 of 10
Kim Finnane and Deborah Kelly, Mullingar, at the solstice event.Image 10 of 10
Tom Leavy and Claire Bracken with Dolly.The Water Street Association in Castlepollard hosted a Summer Solstice gathering with Cúige last week as part of ‘The Coterie’ – ‘a meet up of like minded people for conversation’.
The event followed a gathering at Lough Crew to mark the Solstice, and other events will follow in each of the next four months.
Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner at the Castlepollard gathering, Rachel Cassen of the Water Street Association based in the town, explained what was happening on the evening, and the background to the group.
“We have regular culture nights, like tonight, the Summer Solstice, and we’re working with another group of creative people in Mullingar, called Cúige, and tonight we have the second of three circular economy events that we’re running.
"The circular economy is making sure that things are passed around, clothes, equipment you longer want to use that someone else could re-purpose, furniture, event paint that you have in your garage – that we can share around with our neighbours.
“Tonight we’re looking at the skills and talents of ourselves in the Water Street Association and Cúige, and what we can share together. We have music and food, and at our events we always try to have local produce, cheese from Sheridan’s, local fruit and veg, bread made by one of our members and chilli jam she makes.
“We have eco art camps for children, and they sold out on the first day we advertised them last month, so the children will take their lunches from produce in the garden and they’ll work inside and outside on a number of eco-art projects.”
Background
“The Water Street Association is an inclusive neighbourhoods initiative, where a group of neighbours got together during Covid to see how they could make life even better in Castlepollard, Rachel said in explaining the background to the organisation.
“Water Street Association is about growing connections between people and creating places where people can make things, spend time and meet others.
“We realised during Covid that a lot of people had become very isolated – young families had moved to the area, older people who had lived here for a long time… people were feeling isolated after the hard years of Covid.
“So we have a long lease on this premises, and we have half an acre of land that we’ve turned into a community garden with a little orchard, and we’re developing a biodiversity project here.
"People come every Saturday, all ages, from young children and I think our oldest regular gardener is in her late 80s. It’s a really enjoyable to run the community garden with our neighbours.
“Another thing that we did straight away was host the North Westmeath Community Cinema, and a completely different group of people gather to watch a film, usually a foreign film, subtitled, something that you wouldn’t see in the big cinemas.
“When we opened last year, that coincided with the arrival of 17 Ukrainian refugees to the town, who are living between the old nursing home and a property on this street. The first night [when they arrived in Castlepollard], representatives of the Water Street Association went down said ‘we’re your neighbours, how can we help, what do you need’.
“We met an English teacher, Annette, and between her and ourselves, we began to run three English classes every week, beginner groups and intermediate; now 85% of that group of 70 refugees are working, so the English classes have wound down, and we just have one class a week for a small group of people.
“One of the of the Ukrainians has come on as a member of the association, there are eight of us, and the same lady has set up a studio here in the cottage, so we have the gardens, we have the 80-square-metre hall, and we have a cottage, and we’ve just heard, and we’re delighted, that we are recipients of the Community Recognition Award for our work with refugees, which has been a very small part [of what they do], but we’ve been awarded funding to make this space more accessible and to upgrade the cottage so it’s more environmentally friendly.”