Samhain: our Celtic Season Arts Programme

We hope you’re all wrapping up warm and enjoying the abundance of colour as the season changes so evidently around us. I’m sure you’ll all have noticed how rapidly the daylight is dwindling and how steadily the trees are dropping their leaves. As November beckons, we are fast approaching Samhain, which means the next event in our seasonal arts programme is on the horizon - hooray! 

Whether you’re desperately clinging onto the summer or excited to lean into the chillier months, an opportunity to gather, get creative, and share good food is always a good thing in our books. 

Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter. Ancient celts believed it to be the time of the year where the veil between the living and the non-living was thinnest. Lighting bonfires, wearing costumes to ward off spirits, and feasting were all important traditions: it’s not at all surprising that modern Halloween has its roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain!  But they most definitely are not the same thing. Samhain was regarded as not only the end of summer, but as the end of the year itself, with the beginning of winter marking the start of the next. It’s essentially Celtic New Year! 

To connect with - and celebrate - this special time in the year, we will be gathering at the Boomerang Centre on Saturday 1st November, as we would for our usual Green Team meet up, but at a later time of 2pm. Wrap up warm and come along for an opportunity to connect with the changing season, enjoy a simple creative activity, spend some social time with one another and share some delicious food:

Anna will be bringing along some wonderful mini weaving looms and assorted yarn so we can all try our hand at creating a simple small-scale weaving while we sit and blether. This is a no-pressure, low-stakes activity, as always. Anna has said she will give us a wee demo to begin with. (Thank you in advance, Anna!) 

Post weaving adventures, we will tuck into a pot-luck feast - seasonal ingredients warmly encouraged! So if you’ll be attending, we invite you to consider bringing along some food to share, if you can. There’s never any pressure, so please do not consider this a barrier to attending if you’re keen to participate otherwise. 

If you’d like to join us and collectively breathe a bit of warmth and joy into the beginning of the darker half of the year, please do let us know! It's always helpful to have a sense of expected numbers. I’ve attached the poster for a quick reference - shout out to Anna for the beautiful art work featured. As ever, please do get touch if there are any questions or queries.