Thursday, December 18th, RTÉ One and RTÉ Player
In a small wooden house in County Kilkenny, Patrick Lydon’s life is ebbing away. Throughout his final year he reflects on an extraordinary life that took him from a budding career in rock journalism in America to trailblazing, with his wife, Gladys, the development in Ireland of the radically inclusive Camphill Movement, sharing life in community with people of diverse needs and abilities and backgrounds.
Patrick Lydon is a rare bird. A ‘social artist’, his raw materials are human relations. He is bursting with love for his fellow man, especially the more vulnerable amongst us. An idealistic intellectual growing up in a high-achieving family in Boston in the 1960s and fuelled by rock ‘n roll, he was destined for a career in rock journalism. By 19 he had reported for the New York Times on The Rolling Stones in Hyde Park and on Woodstock. But a deeper disenchantment with American culture, and then a call to arms in Vietnam, took him instead to Ireland, where his discovery of the Camphill Movement, and with it the love of Gladys Kinghorn, changed his destiny, and gave him his vocation.
Camphill saw people with and without disability as of equal spiritual integrity, equal in respect and citizenship. They lived a radical form of community life-sharing with particular emphasis on the potential, education, integration and integrity of all, regardless of ability. Their communities were based in largely self- sustaining, organic farms and gardens. Nobody was paid. People coming to live there found their lives enriched. ‘Cared for’, ‘carers’ and ‘service provision’ were alien concepts. All contributed according to ability. Many people spent their entire lives in Camphill communities.
In the fifty years since Patrick met Gladys in Camphill, they have been at the heart of that movement in Ireland, in the establishment of over eighteen residential communities and social initiatives, In 2021, just as Patrick is collaborating with his friend, the filmmaker Éamon Little, on a work to mark Camphill’s fifty years in the Republic of Ireland, he is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease.
This documentary is an unflinching journey to the end of an exemplary life, probing ‘otherness’ in our society and asking searching questions about the future we want to create. Patrick’s story calls forth the story of Camphill itself and articulates an approach to life that struggles for survival in today’s consumerist climate. At a time when the world is in need of inspiration, Patrick and Gladys’ story is just the ticket. This tender, provocative love story celebrates community, disability, inclusion and otherness.
Born That Way airs Thursday, December 18th, RTÉ One and RTÉ Player at 10.15pm