Clifden Arts Festival has commissioned three shorts by local videographer Barry Ryan. These films represent the importance of community Arts endeavours from young musicians, teachers and mentors to the profound power of the visual arts that pulses through the local Connemara Community.
These shorts will available on the Festival’s Channel on the lead up to the Festival.
Community
Brendan Flynn, Founder of the Clifden Arts Festival, speaks on this year’s Festival and what it means to the local community.
Music
Connemara based musician and teacher Marie Walsh with local musicians and students gather at Derrigimlagh Bog to fill the air with music.
A Tune for John G
A collaboration video featuring over 20 Well Known Button Accordion Players from all over Ireland playing a specially composed tune in memory of well-known Accordion Player and festival stalwart, the late John Gerard Walsh from Clifden. They perform a reel composed by his daughter Marie in his memory. John was a well known musician all over Ireland, one of the founding members of the Clifden Comhaltas Branch and he would have performed at and supported the festival with many other local musicians throughout the years.
Visual Arts
A tour of the studio of artist, Bernie Dignam. Watch as she uses a variety of media to convey different narratives about the local environment and other themes that inspire her work.
Digital Talks
Clifden Arts Festival will be presenting the services of digital talks over the course of the Festival. Consult the website for more information.
Colum McCann
Colum McCann is the author of seven novels, including Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic. and three collections of stories. He will read from his newest and Booker Prize Nominated novel, Apeirogon.
Sponsored by: Bill and Denise Whelan
Sinéad Gleeson and Elaine Feeney
A reading by Sinéad Gleeson Chaired by the poet Tony Curtis.
Elaine Feeney has published three collections of poetry, Where’s Katie?,
The Radio was Gospel, Rise, and a drama piece, WRoNGHEADED, commissioned by Liz Roche Company. She teaches at The National University of Ireland, Galway and St Jarlath’s College. Her work has been widely published and anthologised in Poetry Review, The Stinging Fly, The Irish Times, Copper Nickel, Stonecutter Journal and others. As You Were is her fiction debut and was named Top Ten Debuts for 2020 in the Observer.
Sinéad Gleeson is a writer of essays, criticism and fiction. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Winter Papers and Gorse, and a story of hers will appear in Being Various: New Irish Short Stories published by Faber in May 2018. She is the editor of three short story anthologies, including The Long Gaze Back: an Anthology of Irish Women Writers and The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Women Writers from the North of Ireland, both of which won Best Irish Published Book at the Irish Book Awards. Sinéad has worked as an art critic and broadcaster and has presented The Book Show on RTÉ Radio 1. She lives in Dublin. Her debut book of essays Constellations was published in 2019 and won The Non-Fiction Book of the Year at 2019 An Post Irish Book Awards, the 2020 Dalkey Literary Awards (Emerging Writer) It was also shortlisted for the 2020 Rathbones Folio Prize, the 2020 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography and the Royal Irish Academy’s Michel Déon Prize. Her latest anthology The Art of the Glimpse, an anthology of 100 Irish short stories, past and present will be published later this year.
Sponsored by: Bobby and Truly Gilmore
Tomi Reichental
Tomi Reichental in conversation with Students of Clifden Community School and Des Lally
Tomi, the author of I was a boy in Belsen, has lived in Dublin since 1959 for 55 years he did not speak of his wartime experience; since breaking his silence he has been back to Bergin-Belsen and his home village of Merasice. He is a regular speaker in schools where he is a living testament of the Holocaust for a new generation.
Sponsored by: Síocháin Foundation and the Community Foundation of Ireland
Áit agus Anam: Remembering Tim and Mairéad Robinson
An interdisciplinary, online conversation celebrating the lives and legacies of Tim and Mairéad Robinson, who passed away earlier this year. Join us for our ‘zoom regatta’ where our guest speakers discuss fieldwork and friendships, old and new, and pay homage to the couple’s extraordinary contribution to the region and world of nature writing. Speakers include poet Moya Cannon, cultural geographer Dr Fidelma Mullane and historian and nature writer Dr David Gange.
We are especially delighted to also have members of the Clifden Arts Festival committee involved, with contributions from Brendan Flynn and Des Lally on their memories of Tim and Mairéad’s connection to Ireland’s longest-running community arts festival. Chaired by Dr Nessa Cronin and co-hosted by the Centre for Irish Studies and Moore Institute, NUI Galway and Clifden Community Arts Festival.
