Environment will be celebrated at festival
By Mary Dennehy
NATURE and creativity will flourish at this year’s Tallafest, with Tallaght’s local environment being celebrated alongside a fun, creative focus on global environmental issues such as single-use plastics and ‘save the bees’.
The Nature Zone always plays a key role in Tallafest and is a reflection of the area’s rural environment and its many parks, forest trails and waterways.
Millie and Zachary at The Nature Zone in Tallafast last year
The usual favourites will be back in the Nature Zone when Tallafest takes to Tallaght Village on June 30, including Wooly Wards Farm and Tallaght farmer Donie Anderson and his trusty sheepdog Jess.
However, this year Tallafest will take a creative, fun approach to the growing global environment issue of single-use plastics and the campaign to Save our Bees.
Tallaght Community Council (TCC), which organises Tallafest, has this year teamed up with the Litter Mugs to run two arts and crafts projects – with Scoil Santain and Social Circle, a parent-led activity group for children with autism, engaging in the workshops before the festival on June 30.
The Litter Mugs, which is a group of local volunteers who care for Sean Walsh Park, will help deliver the workshops, which will see children create and upcycle a sea turtle from end-of-life items like CDs, buttons and paper, and the upcycling of plastic bottles to make a mobile bee and flower pot.
Drop-in workshops
The upcycled creations by the children of Scoil Santain and Social Circle will be on display during the the festival on June 30, and will hopefully inspire other young people to get involved in Tallafest’s drop-in workshops on the day where they will learn to upcycle items to make bees, insects and other animals.
Michael Finn, an award-winning wildlife photographer and Tallaght Community Council’s environment officer, said: “As a keen environmentalist, I am delighted to be working on these nature and creative arts projects and partnering with the Litter Mugs.
“It is important to help teach the next generation of the growing environmental issues such as single-use plastic pollution and how that negatively impacts our parks and waterways.
“These Tallafest 2018 projects will take these issues into the classroom in a fun way and will help encourage our kids and grandkids to start to think differently about them.”
Tallafest will pitch tent in Tallaght Village on June 30, for further details visit the Tallafest website.
