Each year, the Liverpool Irish Festival seeks the support of city centre and regional landmarks to turn emerald in honour of St Patrick’s Day.
#GlobalGreening was set up by Tourism Ireland and operates internationally. International sites have included: Sydney, Venice, Milan, Hong Kong and Washington DC -and many more- celebrating Irish communities across the world.…
Over the years, the Liverpool Irish Festival has considered Irishness in terms of creative legacy and production. We have investigated Irishness via dual-heritage lives; the genetic make-up of the city; historic migration and contemporary identity theory (post-Brexit).
Though we have discussed migration and migrants a lot -including causes, diaspora groups and long-term effects- we have given less consideration to modern-day views of domestic migration, or how Irish migrancy is compared to other ‘transient’ communities.…
The Festival has always dreamed of having its own theme song.
A tune that helps to tell our story; reflect our creativity and honour the people we serve. We thought we could use a song at the start of events -online and inperson; use it on adverts and mini-films we make for celebration days, and innumberable other occasions where we want to make an impression when a logo, banner or speech isn’t the right thing…
In December, we were alerted to a new fund; a Creative Community Fund (#CreativeCommunity), organised by the Government of Ireland.…
Many of you will have read campaigns about the Irish Language Act in Northern Ireland and will have views on national languages being spoken at home and abroad. Language itself can be a contentious subject; politicised and exclusionary for some, but ‘mother languages’ often transport people to happy places; to a loved one’s voice and to connections not brought about by any other sound.…
Maz O’Connor came to the Festival’s attention in 2018 when she discovered and shared the history she had unearthed about her family’s Irish connections.
Those findings inspired her next album, Chosen Daughter and a feature we ran (article on page 24).…
We began work with Alison Little in 2016 when we first launched our In:Visible Women programme. A Liverpool based artist, activist and educator, Alison’s work layers texture and printed evidence against abuse and empowerment.
Following on from the in memoriam work the Festival did with Eavan Boland’s poem Quarantine in 2020, Alison has created a visual response to this work.…
Sub-title: A quick, short, and linear exercise to map the Royal Charter’s failed-return to Liverpool against the history of weather forecasting.
<<<During lockdown, Derry-based Hong Konger, artist Edy Fung has used weather to help motivate her working cycles.
In doing so, she has studied meteorological history, finding links between Derry and Liverpool.…
Write your first Christmas card to a stranger…
The Liverpool Irish community has within it isolated members, who -particularly in lockdown- have few contacts or digital interactivity to rely on. Help us let them know they are being thought about this festive season by sending them a Christmas card using our CARA service.…
During lockdown we’ve kept chatting with Sefton Park Palm House, continuing from our fundraiser last year, through #GlobalGreening in March to today. Over that time, the Palm Readers group has taken on new meaning; connecting readers and friends and providing opportunities for people to escape in to other worlds via the book selections they make.…
As part of our Lockdown Lights project, we selected two poems and invited people to record themselves reading them, so we could geneate a film, to share as part of this year’s digtal launch.
Active, positive and full of creative hope, Stephen James Smith’s poem We Must Create was selected in counterpoint to Eavann Bolanf’s Quarantine.…
Siubhán Macauley – A reflection…
Lifting, carrying, hoisting, heaving, we were mid-move when Boris Johnson announced the UK-wide lockdown on account of the coronavirus. Settlers, we made new turf our own, and filled our áít shona nua with colour, kindness, curries.…
