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Part of the Scottish International Storytelling Festival and the Aberdeen and Beyond Storytelling Programme, sponsored by Traditional Arts and Culture ScotlandIn ancient Ireland the Pagan King Sweeney (Suibhne) fights back against the onslaught of Christianisation as his beloved forests are felled to make way for churches. On the battlefield Sweeney is cursed to become a bird, takes flight, and is driven deep into the wild. Among the branches the old King surrenders to the poetry and peace of wild things. In 1992 Colin Macleod takes roost in an old beech tree in Pollok Park in Glasgow as an act of protest. Once gifted to the people of Glasgow, Pollok Park and the surrounding community is threatened by the construction of the M77 motorway. Pollok is declared a free state as a community musters beneath the trees, galvanised to fight for social and environmental justice.
Storyteller David Hughes explores madness and masculinity, transformation and belonging through the stories of two men with a radical love of place. One in quiet solitude in the heart of a wild wood, the other inspiring a movement of resistance in the schemes of Pollok. Who really are the mad ones? Those among the branches who fight from a love of the world or those that fell forests and sever communities in the name of progress?
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Event venue
The Sir Duncan Rice Library, University of Aberdeen, Bedford Rd,Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Tickets
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