Rewild Your Relationship with

Ireland in 6 Transformational Days

Founded in 2020, Hedge School | Scoil Scairte has been at the heart of the resurgence of the Irish language creating immersive online learning experiences that have connected over 5,000 people across Ireland and the global diaspora to living cultural heritage.

Now, we are bringing it home. 

This summer we will gather in person, on the land during the ancient fire festival of Lughnasa. 

Our Summer School is a six-day immersion for adults who feel the pull of Irish cultural heritage and want to experience it from the inside out.

Part rewilding Summer School. 

Part adult Irish College. 

Part Creative Retreat. 

Part spiritual Homecoming.

Together, we gather as a meitheal immersed on the land in deep time to learn the language and live the culture. We will share ancestral wisdom and cultural practices that help us to reconnect with ourselves, with each other, and this wild place we call home.

Join us to experience

Language as medicine.Culture as lived practice.Land as teacher.
Community as kin.

The Wild Spirit of Ireland is calling. 

If you feel the pull, this is your invitation

Why This Gathering Exists

Something is stirring.

Across Ireland and throughout the 80+ million-strong global diaspora, people are searching for deeper roots and the right relationship with the web of life.

You may recognise yourself here:

• You learned Irish in school but never felt it in your body.
  You carry Irish ancestry that feels unresolved.
  You yearn for belonging that is experienced, not imagined.
  You want something deeper than nostalgia.
  You sense that Irish culture is more than heritage, it is a way of being.

What began digital gathering space is now calling us home to gather on the lands of Ériu , in kinship and community.

If you feel called to deepen your connections to culture, kin and ancestry then this immram, or wonder voyage, is for you.

What is it?

Our Summer gathering is not just a language course. It is a transformational immersion rooted in the psyche and soul of a resilient people and a storied land.

We blend tradition with innovation by honouring the old ways in new ways. This cultural immersion builds a bridge between the island of Ireland and our 80 million-strong global diaspora. We will gather as the ancients did to celebrate and participate in a powerful living culture. This is your invitation to step into your role as an ancestor-in-training in kinship with the land that remembers you.

Scoil Scairte is soul retrieval. We don’t just teach Irish, we rewild what it means to be Irish and a global citizen. You will strengthen your relationship with an Ghaeilge,  reconnect with ancestral wisdom, and step into shared story and song, creativity and community with like hearted people from all walks of life.

Through embodied, ecological and somatic learning, we revive ancestral memory, awaken the body, rewild the imagination and decolonise the mind. Alongside artists, activists and global wisdom keepers, we tend the living edge of cultural healing. In a world shaped by rupture and forgetting, Scoil Scairte is an act of cultural repair.

Curriculum

Our world-class faculty will join us on site to live, work and collaborate for 2 days before students arrive. On the final day, the local community will be invited to attend performances and events created during the week. All will participate in a closing ceremony

At its heart, Scoil Scairte is about restoring relationships:

✦ with language

✦ with land

✦ with lineage

✦ with culture

✦ with all life

Scoil Scairte offers a supportive, soulful environment to reconnect with yourself, with others and with the living world through the potency of this ancient language.

Our approach is holistic, trauma informed, somatically sensitive and created to suit diverse learning styles and needs. Building on our award-winning work, Scoil Scairte weaves science with spirituality, ancestral knowledge with systems change and somatic practices with shamanic technologies.

After Five Days, You Will Leave With

✦ Greater confidence speaking and using Irish

✦ A felt connection to land and ancestral memory

✦ Deep cultural literacy rooted in place

✦ Creative inspiration and activation

✦ Lifelong friendships and kinship networks

✦ A renewed sense of belonging

✦ A felt sense of right relationship with language, land & lineage

Where?

Long seen as the home of traditional Irish music, County Clare is quietly becoming the hub of a grassroots revival of other skills and an inspiring example of ecotourism along Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way. 

Our gathering takes place on 50 acres of native forest and regenerative farmland, in the heart of the Burren & Cliffs of Moher Geopark.  Step into the wild beauty of North Clare, where limestone landscapes meet the Atlantic coast, a setting designed for experiences deeply rooted in Irish heritage, nature, and sustainability.

The Common Knowledge Centre is itself a living embodiment of the sustainable practices taught in the Centre’s world-renowned skill-sharing courses. Your home away from home is shaped by intentional craft and held by the wisdom of the land.

Recognised by Condé Nast as one of the “Best Places to Go in Europe” and named among Ireland’s most beautiful stays, Common Knowledge is more than a venue. It is an award-winning, non-profit social enterprise dedicated to regeneration, land stewardship, and skill-sharing. Guests participate in a vision of a more sustainable, connected, and empowered Ireland, learning, practicing, and weaving together ecology, craft, and community.

Their resident chefs bring passion and care to every meal, creating dishes that are both wholesome and deeply satisfying. Guided by the Centre’s ethos of sustainability, the Ottolenghi trained chef draws from local, seasonal, and organic produce whenever possible including fresh ingredients harvested from the Centre’s own permaculture gardens. A thoughtfully chosen selection of natural and organic wines is available to accompany the meals, offering a gentle complement to the flavors of the season and the spirit of the place.

Who are the guides?

Scoil Scairte gathering is an immersion in the psyche and soul of a powerful people and place, guided by Kathy Scott and a collective of bilingual artists, activists, educators, culture bearers, indigenous language advocates, and global wisdom keepers. 

Kevin Whelan, Theo Dorgan, Diarmuid Lyng, Timmy Creed, Annemarie Ní Churreáin, Michael Gallen, Lucy O'Hagan, Emma Dabiri, Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Niall Morahan, Pat McCabe (Woman Stands Shining), Siobhan O’Kelly, Seosamh Mac Seoin, Ajeet, Liam O'Maonlai, Leah Song (Rising Appalachia),  Jenny Ní Ruiséil, Domhan, Aine Tyrrell and Ceara Conway.

This is a world-class cultural faculty, the likes of which no other learning experience in Ireland offers. These respected voices across the arts and culture spectrum centre the Irish language and position everything else in relationship to it. We also host indigenous wisdom keepers from around the world. Each guide tends the flame of tradition, honouring the old ways in new ways. 

This is a world-class cultural faculty united by a commitment to living language and cultural repair.

(BELOW TO BE CHANGED)

Kathy is a cultural activist and creative entrepreneur dedicated to creating provocative experiences that animate the spirit of our times. Her greatest mission in this life is to nudge humanity forward by inspiring people to rise and lift each other up along the way. She is the creative director of The Trailblazery which was founded as a response to a need for deeper human connection and belonging in our world.

Manchán is a writer and documentary-maker. He writes occasionally for The Irish Times on culture & travel, presents the RTÉ podcast The Almanac of Ireland, and is author of the award-winning, best-selling Thirty-Two Words for Field (Gill, 2000), and Listen to the Land Speak (Gill, 2022). He has made dozens of documentaries on issues of world culture for TG4, RTÉ  & Travel Channel.

Joseph (Seosamh Mac Seoin) an Ulster Irish teacher, actor & filmmaker who teaches at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan and has also taught at the New York Irish Center in Queens. Dedicated to promoting the Irish language, Joseph is also a presenter on TG4/Cúla4, the first Irish-language kids' TV station.

ACCOMODATION

We have curated a list of accommodation in the region that caters to all from camping to local hostels, guest houses and award winning hotels

Why?

• We are living in bewildering times that are awakening a deep hunger for belonging, meaning, and connection. Across Ireland and the 80+ million-strong diaspora, people are seeking deeper roots, kinship and right relationship with land and lineage. 

  
  

  Ireland has always been a beacon of culture and consciousness. From early monasteries to hedge schools tucked along hedgerows, fields, and rivers, knowledge and ancestral wisdom were preserved at the edges, wherever people could gather.

  
  

  In the twentieth century, the Gaelic and Cultural Revival carried this energy forward, reclaiming language, song, and story for future generations. Now, a new wave is rising.

  
  

  Scoil Scairte meets this moment as an award-winning contemporary hedge school. Founded in 2020, we have connected more than 5,000 people across Ireland and the global diaspora. Through immersive cultural learning, we weave Irish language, folklore, creativity, and indigenous wisdom with personal, social, and ecological wellbeing.

  Together, we return to land, language, lineage, and lore, an initiation to the pathway of ancestors-in-training. We hold a space to remember our cultural inheritance and to stand as living bridges between past and future generations.

  No shamrocks or shillelaghs required.

   

  The resurgence of An Ghaeilge is more than language revival.

   It is an intergenerational movement of

  cultural healing. Every person who speaks, sings, or dreams in

  Irish participates in the reclamation of land, lineage, and imagination, rewilding what it means to be Irish today.

   

  Central to this is dúchas, our deep ancestral sense of belonging

   that reconnects us with ourselves, each other and the place we call home. 

  Reclaiming dúchas roots us in belonging,  even when we are a long way from home.

  In a world shaped by disconnection and colonisation, it reminds us

  of the resilience we carry and the life that can be reclaimed inside and out 

  
  

  Our Summer School aligns with the harvest festival of Lughnasa. 

  This is a time of gratitude, wildness and community. We will gather in the ancient spirit of meitheal where the community comes together to work for the greater good. 

  We will honour the harvest within and around us, celebrating kinship, reciprocity, and connection with the spirits of the land

Recognition from the President of Ireland

“I am deeply grateful to The Trailblazery’s Hedge School for bringing together those who wish to question the kind of world we inhabit and the future we wish to create together.

I thank you for all that you do to not only imagine but to realise a better world.”

Michael D Higgins, Uachtarán Na Héireann, President of Ireland