10.30 - 11.30am: East Asian Calligraphy Workshop

11.30 - 12.00pm: Calligraphy Demonstration & Performance

12.00 - 12.30pm: Collaboration

Talking about "peace" can be very challenging, and sometimes, even overwhelming. We rage, we become upset and we can perhaps be angry with the evil that awoke us from our sweet dreams.

I remember it was a beautiful morning. One of the most charming spring mornings. I sat by the window, waiting for my breakfast to be served. Looking at the warm meal,I suddenly had this powerful image of people on the other side of the world, starving on the street, having lost everything they owned.

I could not eat. 

My heart hurt.

"What can I do, to create peace?" I thought.

Sometimes, we feel very small. We know there are hundreds of children dying; we know our Mother Earth is in pain; we know people in Ukraine are forced to leave their country and do not even have a roof over their heads.

"What can I do, to create peace?"

Looking deeply, I realized that each of us can do something to bring peace into this world. We can start small, from ourselves, our family, our community, our nation, and, that’s how we can create a more peaceful and loving world.

If you are an artist, you can use your brush to create and inspire others;

If you are a writer, you can use your talent of words to create loving poems;

If you are a parent, you can help your children by showing them what is love, peace and joy; 

If you are a politician, you can try your best to make policies that are inclusive and community building;

If you are an educator, you can raise the next generation by bringing loving speech and mindful actions into the classroom.

What to expect 

During the workshop, we will learn how to use an oriental brush, how to sit and how to breathe to bring ourselves home, where we feel relaxed, free and happy. We will learn how to draw ideograph "合" （“Peace / harmony”）. We will look together how this ideograph developed thousands years ago from a symbol to its formal writing system. 

Followed by this workshop, Yingge will demonstrate these symbols through a live brush performance, with her personal embodiment and expression of "合" （“Peace / harmony”）.

Yingge would love to, humbly and wholeheartedly, invite you to join her, with each of your brush strokes on the paper, to create a collaboration artwork that is imprinted with peace, harmony and interbeing.

“Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest - whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.”  We wish you to join us to create, have fun and bring “peace” into ourselves, our community and the world.

Yingge Xu, an ink brush artist, meditator and peace, positive relationship promotor. Yingge grew up in a traditional Chinese family where she was surrounded with all the cultural elements and atmosphere. Since her early childhood, she was following her father when he was practicing Tai Qi, meditation and calligraphy. Later she trained at the Chinese Flower and Bird Painting Institute and continued her learning with ink brush artists from both China and Japan.

Moving to Ireland in 2015, and seeing how meditation is taught and applied in the West, inspired a new perspective of her own art and cultural background. She participated in the Chinese New Year Festival at CHQ Dublin in 2018, collaborated with I.C.C.S (the Irish-Chinese Culture Society) and CIMA (China Ireland Media Association) for an ink painting exhibition and live demonstration at dlr LexIcon Library in 2019, and in March 2021 her work will be showcased by Solas Nua in Washington DC as part of an online multimedia event exhibiting the best of contemporary Irish art and culture

Yinnge hosts ink painting and calligraphy workshops in Ireland and online in which she shares her passion for both meditation and ink-brush art, not as separate activities but as a ‘wholesome experience’.

Website: www.artofthebrush.ie

Instagram

Youtube