'Let's go bananas' to learn about food waste
‘Let’s Go Bananas’ is the title of an event taking place in Water Street, Castlepollard on Wednesday May 14, starting at 7pm, organised by The Crafty Yellowship, a project funded by Creative Westmeath.
This workshop is to explore food waste, carbon footprints, genetic diversity and composting through the lens of the slightly comical banana.
Participants will do some culinary decorating with edible flowers and herbs, as well as some block printing using potatoes and other materials.
Yellow is the colour of spring, whether it’s dandelions or daffodils, it’s everywhere you look outdoors at this time of year. It’s apt, then, that The Crafty Yellowship kicked off in April with ‘Bloom where you’re planted’.
That well-attended workshop at the Refill Mill started with a discussion of the global flower industry and participants learned how locally grown flowers are a low carbon product which also helps biodiversity.
They went on to create some beautiful vases with recycled materials, and continued the discussion and community building over cake and kombucha.
The Crafty Yellowship offers a low-stress way to learn more about two main drivers of the climate crisis. Biodiversity loss and carbon emissions are serious topics but the team behind the project think they can be explored without a ‘guilt-trip’, while picking up some new craft skills and meeting interesting people.
Participants will leave these workshops with an understanding of the problem and its root causes, as well as strategies for addressing them. They will also meet new people and build a community and network that extends beyond the classroom.
The format is simple: a 20-minute discussion of key aspects of the climate crisis followed by one to two hours of hands-on creative work by the participants in response to the discussion.
This activity is supported by the collaborating artist(s), in many cases using mixed media to create a 3D piece. This hands-on practice allows for reflection on and development of the learnings, and provides a welcoming environment to build community.
Details of upcoming courses and booking links are at bigskyflowers.ie/crafty-yellowship-2025. The Crafty Yellowship Team are Anna Browne, Bertille de Lestrade and Martina Coyle.
Anna (bigskyflowers), has been growing food and flowers for decades, and has been steadily building a reputation as an educator in all things ‘green’ since 2019. Anna has previously run workshops in collaboration with The Refill Mill, including ‘Lake County Learnings’ in 2023 and 2024.
Bertille (thestudiobleu) has an internationally recognised art practice since 2019 and has successfully collaborated with Anna for the Sustainability horizons project in 2024 and 2025. Her art practice uses recycled materials as a rule.
Martina (@martina_coyle_artist) has been running workshops for several decades and incorporates an eco-social art practice in much of her work.