Douglas Street Community Celebrates International Women's Day... In Style!

cork | gender and sexuality | feature

Thursday March 11, 2010 12:23

by FSB!

A community rouses itself to honour women and their struggles for a better world

Celebrating in Style!

A 'miracle' of grassroots community organising happened yesterday – the community of Douglas Street, Cork came together and hosted an incredible diverse and immensely satisfying celebration of International Women's Day!

This was a remarkable day of events dedicated to the celebration and recognition of the achievements of women and to the celebration of the contribution of women down the centuries to the struggles for human rights, workplace rights, social justice and democracy worldwide. A programme of over forty events organised on a shoestring (a shoestring gladly supplied jointly by the Independent Workers' Union and the Cork branch of the Workers' Solidarity Movement) went ahead with almost no hitches, with a truly diverse range of talks, workshops, activities, performances and more that brought hundreds to Douglas St. From ten in the morning to very late at night.

Many thanks are due to the group of women (and a few men) who put in a magnificent organising effort, especially Deirdre who must have visited every house in the neighbourhood while putting the programme together for this magical day of celebration.

One could write for hours describing the variety of activities on the day, so perhaps it is simpler and better to illustrate the day's events with photographs from the nearly-a-dozen venues involved. Hope you enjoy them.

DIY Religion workshop

Parenting workshop, lunchtime at Fionnbarra's

DIY lotion making workshop, afternoon

Spark Deeley signing her book after her workshop, afternoon

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Comments (17 of 17)

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great work

by mary

Thu Apr 29, 2010 23:47

great to see,women's achievements,and social changes being recognised,as we know even when women were not allowed acknowlegment or status by their own merit,they were often used by their menfolk as muses,for their new ideas and inventions,which has only been acknowleged in the latter years,i did a women's studies course some years ago ,and was suprised at what i did not know on such gender issues,not just to do with recent work place rights etc,but how women and men were socialised very differently,often for simple common sense reasons of that time,but more often to affirm one

gender over another,which did not make sense and was later abolished often through pressure groups such as women's groups like these in ireland.
We still have a long way to to in order to achieve gender equality,there are a lot of problems with human trafficking of women and young girls forced into prostitiution in ireland,one of which i have come across, and this is often left unsaid,also in the workplace,when a woman gives birth even in 2010,she is ultimately doomed,i have come across many instances of this..

Such a informative article....

by Caroline Brown - http://www.datarecoverysoftware.com/

Mon Mar 29, 2010 08:20

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Street sense

by cropbeye

Tue Mar 16, 2010 20:21

086241179

The entire day was brilliant.

The idea of using all of Douglas Street was especially good.

Role on Douglas St Womens day 2011.

More photos!

by Hilary

Tue Mar 09, 2010 22:51

My full set of images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hilaryaq/sets/721576235866...0146/

Contact me for high res versions of the files if anyone needs any via www.draiochtwebdesign.com!

Great day yesterday :)

thanks to one and all!

by anarkitty

Tue Mar 09, 2010 21:14

thanks to everyone who got involved in the organising, all the venues who participated, all the people who helped out on the day and to everyone who brought beautiful energy to the many events and participated during the day! it was magic! :)

Well done

by Black Guard

Tue Mar 09, 2010 17:24

.... looks great!

re the above post

by M O'C

Tue Mar 09, 2010 16:13

Sorry I didn’t give a mention to the exciting exposition of tapping and affirmation skills developed by Ken Parker and Rosita Kingston that were on display at Loafers during the course of the day. Rosita explained to participants at the workshop how, under the guidance of a skilled and trained consultant, these tapping skills release old and negative energy patterns using traditional acupuncture techniques and NLP (neuro linguistic programming).

I agree that this was a 'miracle' of grassroots community organising , and that is something that we should celebrate with great joy .In many ways it was a celebration of “miracle” itself . Miracle has come to be identified in the eyes of perhaps the majority as some sort of a tawdry, cheap conjurer’s trick - at the cost of the concept’s infinite and divine universality. A miracle can sometimes take place over the course of millennia, and sometimes in the course of a delightful day such as this one . The point was put eloquently to me in this way by one of the participants at the dream-catcher workshop.

“It's only by changing the experience that the majority has that we can change the experience of the minority.”

The important thing as Deirdre said is to now carry the momentum forward.

A great day for women

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:50

Many thanks indeed to the Workers Solidarity Movement and the IWU . The yoga and diy religion seminars were my favourite parts of the day ; I hope they went some way to answering those who feel that yogic and Christian spiritualities are necessarily incompatable . Hopefully too the positive energies generated made up in some way for the cancellation of the WSM’s tribal drumming and spiral dance workshops . The good news for those who were understandably disappointed over the unfortunate mix-up which led to the last-minute cancellation is that the Presentation Sisters have offered the facilities of the convent for future workshops.

Art Trail on Douglas St., International Women's Day 2010 - 4 - Street Chalk Art

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:30

A couple of examples of ephemeral art works on the Douglas St. pavement. Happy International Women's Day!

Art Trail on Douglas St., International Women's Day 2010 - 3

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:27

More from the Art Trail, Douglas Street Community Celebrates International Women's Day 2010.

Installation on the grounds of the Quakers' Meeting House, just off Douglas St.

Art Trail on Douglas St., International Women's Day 2010 - 2

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:23

More works from the 2010 International Women's Day celebration, Douglas St., Cork.

Art Trail on Douglas St., International Women's Day 2010

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:21

Many thanks to Evanne for curating this art display. I must mention also the events organised for the day at the Munster Literature Centre on Douglas St. - the centre showed filmed readings from women writers who have visited the centre over the years. Many thanks too to all of the venues and people who contributed to a marvellous day of festivities for womankind. Here's hoping it will be the first of many!

Chalking out the Art Trail on Douglas St., morning

More photos from International Women's Day celebration - more! (3)

Tue Mar 09, 2010 14:13

Last set of event photos from a wonderful International Women's Day celebration. I offer my aplogies to those speakers and performers etc. whose events I didn't get around to photographing. If you were at the events on Douglas St. and have photos to share, don't hold back - post them here. Special mention to DJ el Proud Mary, who finished the day's events with a DJ set at the Crúiscín. What a day!!

Kate and Caroline from Viva Palestina Cork talking about their experiences on the recent convoy to Gaza