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The first signs that the human race was living beyond its ecological means came back in the Energy Crisis of the seventies. Those who lived through it learned a lot  about how not to handle the situation - panic, hide your head in the sand, buy yourself time with a new oil-field and fritter it away, make excuses, get self-righteous and puritanical, opt out and become self-sufficient. Those strategies were not sustainable then, and they won't work now.

Now  we are  reaping the whirlwind, and we know that climate change isn't the only threat. There is peak oil, over-consumption of resources, mass extinction, poverty and inequality and loss of biodiversity. There is a massive and irreversible change coming - social,economic political and cultural as well as environmental.

But what many people are beginning to realise is that the changes we have to make to solve our problems have the potential to give us much happier and more meaningful lives than we are living now. We need a new way of living, thinking and creating that will be simple and sustainable, and  that won't involve playing off jobs against environment, the human against the wild, the rich against the poor, that will help us find joy, community and insight as we go.

Lúcháir draws from the insights of geo-poetics, the environmental initiatives of the permaculture movement and the spiritual practices of monastic traditions - particularly that of the Rule of St Benedict.

On this website you will find an outline of the basis of the project,  some explorations and reflections on the theory behind it, and a record of how it is put into practice. There is also an events page, with listings of inspiring events, festivals or exhibitions, a gallery page with links to the many gifted and exciting artists working on similar themes,  and on the Resources page a directory  of useful web-sites, books, organisations and research materials.

Lúcháir is Irish for 'delight', related to the Scottish Gaelic luachair - the soft rush juncus effusus (literally, 'glory, splendour') - and the Welsh llwych, 'lightmaker, a spark'.

The pith of this plant was soaked in tallow and used to make rushlights and so by association the word 'lúcháir' came also to mean 'the gleam of light on water' - a flash of beauty, a moment of enlightenment, and in Celtic tradition, a glimpse of the other-world. In early Christian times, churches in Scotland, and especially graveyards, were often sited at the reedy headwaters of lochs - the places where Heaven and earth are closest.