Dámh Imeall: (h)Edge School
Dámh means ‘academy’ or ‘artistic community’ in the Irish language. Imeall is the Irish word for ‘edge’ or ‘boundary’.
The ‘hedge school’ era in Ireland, during the 18th and 19th century, was an informal system of schooling that preserved traditional Gaelic culture and the classical education of Greek and Roman civilization. These hedge schools were often in homes, barns or secluded, secret places. The educational alchemy of the hedge school movement blends the poetic and the practical during times of existential crisis.
Our Invitation
Dámh Imeall: (h)Edge School offers a ‘way in’ to traditions and ideas that we may not have granted ourselves permission to fully investigate. By exploring rich veins of inherited human culture, we have an opportunity to reclaim our common bond, through learning, curiosity, laughter and conversation.
(h)Edge School is a series of conversations around the inherited wisdom that the arts and spirituality hold for our contemporary lives.
Upcoming Course
Find your self, your tribe, your elders, and your friends, at (h)Edge School.
What to Expect
Damh Imeall: (h)Edge School is a series of conversations around the inherited wisdom that the arts and spirituality hold for our contemporary lives.
(h)Edge school is a familial, informal and joyous exploration, led by a mother and her two sons. Their family dynamic lies at the crossroads of Theology, Philosophy, Musicology, Poetry, and Literature. (h)Edge School is an interactive community of learning and experience.
Whether joining as a witness to passionate conversation, or looking to build upon an academic understanding of a topic, this classroom community is open to you. It is an informal, educational, interdisciplinary, and at times irreverently humorous gathering. You are invited to the warm family kitchen table for a vibrant heart to heart discussion around an array of topics, stories, poetry and song.
The Dámh Imeall: (h)Edge School is like coming home. A sanctuary of stillness from our daily lives, where the seeker, scribe, and genius thinker in each of us is invited to unveil themselves. Come and live with the ancient wisdom that we have the human right to converse with. These ancient streams of traditional ideas and creative artforms go beyond and beneath our individual identities to unite us on our primal spirit level. Transcending our current conventions and minute differences.
(h)Edge School offers a ‘way in’ to traditions and ideas that we may not have granted ourselves permission to fully investigate. By exploring rich veins of inherited human culture, we have an opportunity to reclaim our common bond, through learning, curiosity, laughter and conversation.
We light a candle together at the beginning of each session. This is an energetic invitation to the self and acknowledges our place within a live community of learning and presence.
The Place of Ritual and Prayer
Nóirín’s expertise in leading and presiding over interfaith ritual has been a powerful part of containing all that we learn and laugh about on our (h)Edge School ‘pilgrimagical’ experiences.
We work with themes that are common to spirituality, creativity, music, poetry, and philosophy. Together, we acknowledge the mystery of life, as well as our shared rites of passage.
We honour our connection to the natural world while marvelling at our insatiable thirst for human connection through every, and sometimes any, means. We honour family, but realise that our lives are an epic solo pilgrimage with operatic highs and tragic lows. We honour a return to tradition as we mediate innovation.
A learning and engagement offer: a six-session, two hours per month virtual event to assist us on our journeys into and through the latter-in-life years. On these journeys we want to keep the best of our culture’s, communities’ and families’ current story while also catalyzing the new stories waiting to be born.
Dates: August 5, September 9, October 7, November 4, December 2, January 6
Time: 9am Pacific, 12pm Eastern, 5pm Ireland
2hr sessions with breakout rooms