Camphill ceol and craic
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Wednesday October 28 2009
THE Dingle Camphill Community are holding a music festival all next week to raise funds for their planned housing project at Dún Síon near Dingle.
The community of 18 people is made up of volunteers who care for adults with special needs, in a farming environment. Local farmers have donated livestock to the organisation and the various small development projects undertaken on the farm have been assisted by the wider community.
Camphill have a number of such centres around the country and the Dingle centre was set up five years ago. The community live in rented accommodation or mobile homes locally but have plans to build a multi-million euro centre, which will include four houses, a community hall and workshops.
They have secured outline planning permission for the development but have failed to secure any promise of government aid, according to the centre's coordinater Betsie Konink.
"We want to build four houses for a community of around 40 people. Each house will cost between €800,000 and €1 million. The Department of Environment had a housing grant scheme but that's gone now. We have been on to the local council to see if we can qualify for a housing grant or even if we can be included on a list or get rent allowance but we have had no official response from them," she told The Kerryman this week.
"We are fully supported by the HSE and we are a recognised charity. Everything that we have done here is the result of fundraising. We have young co-workers from all over the world helping on the farm. But rented accommodation is very expensive and we want the people in our care to experience life in a settled environment such as we have at our other centres," she explained.
Next week's music festival will see up to 70 members from Camphill Community centres all around Ireland descend on the peninsula. The festival starts on Monday, November 2, in the Blasket Centre in Dún Chaoin and runs until the following Saturday.
There will be a welcoming concert and a céilí in the centre on Monday night and the Camphill orchestra will rehearse there every day from 10am to 4pm. The highlight of the festival will be a concert in the Hillgrove Hotel on Friday, November 6, followed by a social evening and a disco.
Concert tickets at €10 each are available locally; for further information phone 066/9150787.
