The Ballybunion Bean Festival was a huge success this weekend. The festival was hosted by Brilliant Ballybunion, a creative climate action project that focuses of supporting community collaborators to grow food, protect nature and be creative all at the same time.
The festival took place at the The Barna Way an organic farm and woodland just outside Ballybunion. As part of the commitment to reducing carbon, festival goers cycled or were bussed to and from the venue.
The festival celebrated the humble bean and all its wonderful qualities as a source of food, protein and nitrogen fixing for soil. In the context of the multi-crises of climate change, biodiversity loss and wars, the Ballybunion Bean Festival wanted to create a microcosm of what is possible when communities come together to create transformative change.
Grainne Toomey the project manager said, “One of the things I loved most about the festival was that it was co-created by the local community and we designed and created the festival together”.
According to one of the organisers Rena Blake “Food was really important at the festival. We started growing beans last year and distributed them to the community so that local school children and adults could grow their own beans. All the food was grown and harvested as locally and organically as possible. We managed to serve over 160 meals on the day and only had one tiny bowl of food waste. This was really important in a world where 30% of the food produced is wasted before being consumed according to the UN”.
Lisa Fingleton is the lead artist with the project. She says “Creativity is so important. It wonderful to be able to share drawings and films during the day. Marta O Connor wrote a brilliant interactive play called The Bean Chronicles and Sailhymn performed songs that they had written during their residency at The Barna Way”.
The festival was a great blend of the fun and the serious consideration of the future. It seemed appropriate to end the day in a climate event of heavy rain and fork lightening which couldn’t dampen the magic and energy of the day.
