Haumea Ecoversity

The Mary Robinson Climate and Nature Conference 2025 will take place on 26–27 May in Ballina, Co. Mayo—birthplace of Mary Robinson, Ireland’s former President, former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, current Elder for the world, and founder of the global Dandelion Project for climate justice for women and girls.

Update: view the pdf of Cathy Fitzgerald’s presentation:

I’m delighted to share that I’ll be co-presenting with Angelina Foster, a community artist and Honorary Member of Haumea Ecoversity, at the 2025 Mary Robinson Conference, on Tuesday, 27 May.

Together, we’ll explore how pioneering ecoliteracy education and creative engagement practices guided by the ecological vision and principles of the peoples’ and UNESCO-endorsed Earth Charter, can empower citizens and communities to respond to the climate and ecological crisis with care, creativity, and courage.

Our session brings together:

• Empowering creative professionals with the holistic, values-based ecoliteracy using the peoples and UNESCO-endorsed Earth Charter, an ecological vision and set of principles shared at Haumea Ecoversity—an Irish, online, peer-to-peer ecoliteracy learning community;
  
• And the award-winning, inclusive work of Blueway Art Studios, where Angelina Founder and her creative collaborators have used the Earth Charter to develop innovative, creative community engagement projects and festivals—including the pilot 2024 Future Ancestor Festival supported by the Kildare Climate Innovation Fund.

We’ll highlight how the People’s Earth Charter (200)—a visionary global soft-law document that builds on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and endorsed by UNESCO—can act as a moral compass for artists, educators, and cultural professionals, helping them develop a holistic ecological worldview relatively quickly. Through its inspiring language, principles, and symbols, the Earth Charter can rapidly up-skill creatives as fluent systems thinkers and change-makers. We’ll share examples of how creatives with the Earth Charter are sparking inclusive, joyful, collective learning across diverse communities and audiences.

Our session will show:

• how ecoliterate creative professionals can create safe and brave spaces for dialogue and imagination so all can adopt an ecological worldview, the essential first step to envision more just, equitable, thriving futures for present and future generations
• How the Earth Charter can help creative professionals foster intergenerational conversations around care, ecological integrity, economic and social justice, democracy, non-violence and peace (the four key pillars of the Earth Charter that fosters systems thinking)
• And activate conscience-led responses across diverse communities that conventional science and policy often cannot reach.

As author, physicist and systems thinker Fritjof Capra reminds us:

“A shift in consciousness – a move to an ecological worldview – is the most powerful catalyst for building a thriving, harmonious civilisation.”

We’re excited to share how ecoliterate creative practice, guided by the holistic vision and principles of the Peoples’ Earth Charter, can support this essential shift.

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Acknowledgements:

Cathy and Angelina first met through the three-county Gnáthoga Nádúrtha | Natural Habitats programme, when Cathy Fitzgerald was invited by Carlow Arts Office, following her work for the Carlow Drummin Bog Project, to deliver ecoliteracy training to creatives in Carlow, Kildare, and Meath from 2022 to 2024. This innovative Local Authority project (Carlow Arts Office was short-list for a 2024 Local Government Award) aimed to spark eco-creative community engagement around peatland restoration and was supported through the Arts Council of Ireland’s Invitation to Collaborate programme. This funding supported Cathy and her philosopher colleague, Nikos Patedakis (California), in offering their comprehensive 7-week online Earth Charter course to creatives across the three counties (which Angelina attended), and also for Cathy and award-winning eco-poet Grace Wells to develop 1/2 day in-person ecoliteracy training for local authority staff with strategic responsibility for climate action (ongoing). Cathy continues her ecoliteracy training, her advocacy of the Earth Charter, and in-person training for local authorities and cultural organisations at HaumeaEcoversity.com and Angelina can be contacted at BluewayStudio.ie

More about the conference:

The Mary Robinson Climate and Nature Conference 2025 will take place 26th/27th May in Ballina, Co Mayo, birthplace of the former Irish President.

Who is Mary Robinson?

‘The Conference is a unique transdisciplinary meeting point open to all voices to connect around climate and nature concerns and actions. The organisers take inspiration and courage from the ongoing climate and nature work already happening nationally and globally while acknowledging that there is so much more to do.

This conference recognises that the climate and biodiversity crises are interlinked and are part of a wider polycrisis we face, with accompanying existential challenges. Acknowledging the worsening crisis is not easy and we need bravery and courage to face the harsh realities of our inactions. We need tenacity and support to take more radical but necessary actions that are not always accepted or administered by society at large.

The event also addresses the crisis in our courage – our courage to think and act differently to unlearn/relearn previous habits, pathways, and behaviours in terms of both everyday life and wider policy and governance change. Courage at a time of crisis can bring us much-needed connection – connection to place, to nature, and to each other, to have much-needed purposeful, courageous conversations about the climate and nature crisis. To find and sustain the courage to collectively challenge the status quo of business as usual, and to bring about changes that are positive for nature and for humanity, we need to strengthen and build authentic relationships with ourselves, each other, and the wider world, and we hope that the conference will contribute towards this goal. 

We invite submissions from community groups; independent researchers; academics; policy bodies, amenity organisations, NGOs, social enterprises, and any individual or organisation that seeks to connect with others around climate and biodiversity. The format is flexible and can take the form of workshops; walks; talks; panel discussions; music; art or other creative formats. We wish to provide a supportive platform for diverse voices and diverse lived realities and hope to engage meaningful intergenerational dialogue and togetherness that has the potential to nourish attendees, as well as create fruitful connections and future actions.’

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