Listening for the Óran Mór
THE ART OF THE WELLBEING ECONOMY
A WEAll Ireland ‘Cultural Creatives’ Deep Dive
With John Spillane, Nóirín Ní Riain, Liam Ó’Maonlaí, Cáit Ní Riain, John D’Arcy, The Hive Choir from Queen’s University Belfast, Dónal Ó Céilleachair, Peter Doran (QUB), Matthew Noone (UL).
The Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll) hub on the island of Ireland recognises the vital role of culture, the arts, and the imagination in catalysing a shift from an unequal and extractive economy to one rooted in care, kinship, and collective wellbeing.
This deep dive gathering – Listening for the Óran Mór – on June 24 2025 called together musicians, artists, activists, and academics to explore the deeper cultural resonances of music, story, and performance in reawakening our ecological awareness and re-enchanting our relationship with nature.
As part of a Shared Island project, it brought together participants from around the island of Ireland in a spirit of inclusivity and respect for diversity.
At the heart of our inquiry was the Óran Mór—the Great Song—an ancient Irish concept of the sound that moves through and connects all life.
Drawing from Irish myth and imagination, and inspired by thinkers such as John Moriarty, John O’Donohue, and Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, we explore these questions:
Can music and story help us hear the voices of our rivers, bogs, mountains—and trees—again?
How can a reawakening of our senses and the enchantment of the living world support our work to re-imagine new economic and social imaginaries in the service of wellbeing?
Can performance itself serve as a sacred practice of tuning into the more-than-human world – where the island, her communities are invited to be present to us?
Nóirín Ní Riain performs an opening invocation at the Óran Mór workshop
Robert Coleman describes his research on birdsong
John Spillane performing
The Hive Choir performing
Roisin Markham facilitating
Call to Action for Cultural Creatives: https://sites.google.com/view/cultural-creatives-tools/call-to-action
Download the workshop programme
Part of Blas International Summer School of Irish Music and Dance
🗓️ Tuesday 24th June 2025 | 10:00–18:00
📍 Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick
Watch the video of our February 26 2025 webinar, “Bearing Witness to Ecological Signs of the Times”
During this webinar we examined and bore witness to the work across the island of a new generation of diverse writers, poets, musicians and all who are bringing forth new ‘imaginaries’ and possibilities for lives and livelihoods that meet the ecological and justice demands of our times, in a spirit of inclusivity.
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