Sir, - The idea to plant trees for the Millennium year, associated with Eamon de Buitlear in, your letters column of March 3rd, is one element within a fully developed proposal for Ireland's celebration of the Millennium which was commissioned by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht in 1993. This proposal, OILEAN:2000:ISLAND, is a comprehensive plan for a year long programme of celebration of Ireland and its culture.
It was developed in conference with 28 of Ireland's most experienced arts and media professionals, and has the support of 34 of Ireland's most celebrated international artists from Bono to Brian Friel. In order to be implemented, it is waiting for the Irish Government to establish a Millennium fund. Britain, including Northern Ireland, is already committing, hundreds of millions of UK Lottery money to its own cultural celebration.
It is still not too late for the schoolchildren of Ireland, North and South, to be encouraged to nurture seedlings ready for planting out in the year 2000, and through this process, to learn the critical long term importance of preserving and regenerating our broadleaf tree stock. The Oilean proposal is for such encouragement to form part of an integrated. programme involving the Northern and Southern Departments of Education, Environment and Heritage, the teachers unions, the Sculpture Society of Ireland, the Royal Institute of Architects (in Ireland), Crann, Coillte, the Office of Public Works, the National Trust, local authorities and other relevant bodies, along with every community, workplace and organisation on this island.
The idea is that on one day in the Millennium year, the whole island will plant broadleaf trees simultaneously, and broadcast this action to the rest of the world. Families and workplaces will plant in their own available plots; communities will then gather to plant spinneys on common ground in relation to a work of art created by a community artist, and larger regions will plant groves and, parks around structures commissioned from our sculptors and architects. At the heart of this island wide endeavour will be the unveiling of the Black Pig's Causeway, a necklace of parks and artworks along the Border from Louth and Down to Donegal and Derry.
All these trees, groves, and parks can be named and signposted for future generations; and music, poetry and dance can form part of what is envisaged as a glorious day of cultural and environmental festivity worthy of a great people celebrating a once in a thousand years event. By 1999 it should be worth inviting our worldwide diaspora back home to plant their own trees on lost or forgotten ground. Speed the day! - Yours, etc.,
Programme director,
OILEAN:2000:ISLAND,
1 Ashton Court,
Bedford Row,
Dublin 2.