Event type: Comedy

(Event description below). This event was recorded by Irish in the UK TV and broadcast on 18 Feb 2024. You can see the full TV show here:

Taking their cue from the new Irish bank holiday, held in Brigid’s honour — and Imbolc* — the George Ferguson Dance School and Melody Makers perform a specially curated evening of song and dance.

Brigid: Initially a Pagan goddess, then canonised (proclaimed a Saint); Brigid’s popularity is on the rise as she becomes a multidenominational LGBTQ+ icon (read more here).

Following recent success at the 2024 Liverpool Irish Festival, we represent these two incredible groups. Their engaging 2-hour programme features over 50 musicians and dancers from across Merseyside. The performance takes place in one of Liverpool’s greenest spaces: the ever magnificent Sefton Park Palm House.

If October’s event was anything to go on, this is not to be missed!

We have a select number of standing tickets available, thought to be best for parents of performers. Get in early to get your standing only tickets. Please be aware this is a 2-hour show (total, plus an interval).

The Festival has long been a promoter of Brigid. You can see many of our related commissions here and here.

* Imbolc is the beginning of spring. With the Festival’s annual theme being ‘arrivals’, what better way to mark the advent of a new season than with this stunning event.

For many years, Liverpool Irish Festival has coordinated Merseyside’s contribution to #GlobalGreening for St Patrick’s Day. 2025 was no different.
“We are thrilled that, once again, Liverpool and the region’s civic structures will come out to show support for our Irish diaspora communities. #GlobalGreening was originally the brainchild of Tourism Ireland and we were very pleased to pick up the mantle. As a city with a unique connection to the island of Ireland, being emerald for the night is a flattering colour on us. It is also a symbol of environmentalism and what we can each do to make the world a greener, healthier, happier place”, Dr Ann Hoskins, Liverpool Irish Festival Chair.
Greening regional locations is an act of care; showing Irish diaspora communities that they are seen, recognised and cherished. Green is also the colour of environmentalism, so another depiction of how we love our world and those in it.

Use these hashtags to learn more on social media: #GlobalGreening #StPatricksDay and #FeilePadraig. Share your pics with us on social media by adding our handle @LivIrishFest or tagging us with #LIF2025. Happy St Patrick’s Day! See a short film of the images taken on 17 March 2025 here:

In 2025, the following buildings and structures lit for St Patrick’s night:

Mersey Gateway Bridge, St Helens
Steve Prescott Bridge, Saint Helens
M62/Greystone Road Bridge, Knowsley
The Yoko Ono Lennon Centre, home of The Tung Auditorium, University of Liverpool, Liverpool
The Campanile, Liverpool
The Black-E, Liverpool
M&S Arena, Liverpool
ACC Liverpool, Liverpool
Liverpool Town Hall, Liverpool
Liverpool ONE’s John Lewis bridge, Liverpool
Liverpool ONE’s zig-zag steps, Liverpool
Cunard Building, Liverpool
The Three Graces, Liverpool
George’s Dock Building, Liverpool
Liver Building, Liverpool
Liverpool Parish Church, Liverpool
St George’s Hall, Liverpool
Central Library, Liverpool
World Museum, Liverpool
Seacombe Ferry Terminal, Wallasey
Woodside Ventilation Building, Birkenhead.

There is also a photo archive, on Googledrive, here. We are extremely grateful to each of the teams that enables this to happen and especially to Tourism Ireland, whose initial idea it was.
Environmentalism
In 2025, we’d like to give a significant focus on environmentalism. As a carbon literate organisation it is important to us that we are not wasting energy. Lighting cultural buildings green, rather than their standard colour, takes no more energy that in any other colour, but will symbolise both Ireland and the environment. Lighting anything with LEDs costs between 50-70% less that old lighting systems. Can you swap out your old lightbulbs (when they blow) for LED ones?

This year, onlookers are asked to consider their carbon outputs. Can you make one change to your life that would help the planet?

Due to the carbon footprint of milk, our Artistic Director lowered her cow’s milk intake by seven/eighths and cheese intake to less than half of her previous consumption!  She also has meat free days and takes all her soft plastic to the recycling drop offs at the local superstore. What can you do? The Festival commits to ensuring all our print — newspapers, posters, printer paper, envelopes, books, postage packaging etc — are as responsibly sourced as possible.
Internationalism
#GlobalGreening was originally founded by Tourism Ireland in 2010. It gained international partners, with sites in Sydney, Venice, Milan, Hong Kong and Washington DC and many more. Each celebrates Irish communities across the world. Turning emerald honours the influence, assimilation and impact Ireland has had. It reminds us of the time, effort and labour Irish people have invested in their ‘found homes’ and the friendships made within their host communities. At a time when parts of the world are at war, being able to show our affection for a community — post-conflict — seems all the more pertinent. We hope for a time beyond war and for a time when peace and reconciliation can truly be found.

Below is a gallery of last year’s supporters. For previous years, you can visit our Googledriveof archive images.

Get involved
We invite you to visit as many locations as you can. Add your images to social media, using our handle @LivIrishFest and hashtag #GlobalGreening. We’ll photograph each participating building/structure and share them on Mon 18 March 2024, accessible from our news page.  Keep an eye out on Facebookand Twitter, too, where we’ll try and post some of the images! We hope you will enjoy seeing these buildings and structures light up in honour of Ireland and its people.
2023 poem
For anyone interested, please see Cristina-Steliana Mihailovici’s 2023 St Patrick’s Day poem, here.
2023’s film
2022’s film
2021’s film

The Liverpool Improvisation Festival is back once again! Now an annual highlight in the Unity calendar, we cannot wait to welcome improvisers from far and wide to the Unity stage.

The Unity will become a hive of all thing’s improv, when shows open on Thursday the 24th of April and run through till late on Saturday the 26th of April (10pm).

The Liverpool Improvisation Festival (LIF) brings the best of the world’s improvisation to Liverpool and the best of Liverpool to the world. With local, national, and international talent, including 18 spontaneous shows across 3 days and a day filled with 7 expertly led workshops, LIF2025 has something for everyone!

 

 
To book for individual events, please scroll below.
To book your Friday Festival Pass, click here.
To book your Saturday Festival Pass, click here.
To book your Friday and Saturday Festival Pass, click here.
To book your Weekend Festival Pass, click here.
 

 

Schedule
Thursday 24th April

Show Time
Show

7pm – 8:15pm
The You and Me Show

7pm – 8:15pm
Moses and Bird

7pm – 8:15pm
Behold! The Improvatron

8.45pm – 9.25pm
The Orange of Truth

9.30pm – 10:30pm
Music with Danny Bradley

Friday 25th April

Show Time
Show

4:30pm – 5:20pm
RAWD

4:30pm – 5:20pm
Looprov

5:40pm – 6:30pm
Stupid!

5:40pm – 6:30pm
Family Reunion

7pm – 8:10pm
CSI

8:30pm – 9:10pm
Taxi Tales

9:30pm – 10:30pm
Festival Jam

Saturday 26th April

Show Time
Show

12:30pm – 1:10pm
Jungle of Emotions

1:30pm – 2:20pm
Neil+1 Presents “Cafe Amour”

1:30pm – 2:20pm
Godse and Jansen

2:40pm – 3:20pm
American Gothic

3:40pm – 4:20pm
Taxi tales

5:30pm – 6:40pm
Box of Frogs

7pm – 7:40pm
Allegory of the cave

8pm – 9:10pm
School of Night

9:10pm – 10:30pm
Closing night entertainment

 

Twitter: @FoiLiv Facebook: Liverpool Improvisation Festival Website: www.liverpoolimprovfestival.com

Liverpool BID supports mini-lunchtime-tours to introduce people to the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail and the cultural history it represents.

Join Liverpool Irish Festival’s John Maguire (also of ArtsGroupie) on a revealing journey through Liverpool city centre. Spectators will hear about how the Victorian tragedy of the Irish Famine changed Liverpool’s streets. Trail walkers will learn about how locations were used for sanctuary, nourishment and safety. They will also hear and understand the benevolence of Liverpool’s people. Using a new trail app, headsets and recent Walk of the Bronze Shoes experience, your guide will really help you to walk in the shoes of Liverpool and Irish people 180-years ago.

The walks leave at 12.30PM. Bookers are asked to gather from 12:15PM on the corner of Fenwick Street and Brunswick Street, outside The Alchemist. It will finish at St Nicolas’s Church, after a walk of c.45mins.
Walk dates

Tue 28 Jan 2025
Wed 29 Jan 2025
Tue 18 Feb 2025
Wed 19 Feb 2025
Tue 18 Mar 2025
Wed 19 Mar 2025.

Additional info
These lunchtime tours are city centre based walks, so we recommend people dressing for the weather, in comfortable clothing and footwear.

For people who want to access information before attending the walk, you can see more about our work at www.liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com or by accessing our app.

The tours are subsidised by Liverpool BID to give levy payers new opportunities.

 
Event poster

 

Step inside The House, a ground-breaking immersive VR experience that invites you to explore the legacy of conflict within Northern Ireland through a new lens.

Journey through each room and discover the personal experiences of those affected by the conflict. Featuring quotations and stories drawn from research by the Commission for Victims and Survivors, this experience offers a fresh take on our  history and its impact on the present. 

Duration – 25-30 minutes (including onboarding).
Image credit: Gavin Peden.
This event will take place at Seminar Room G16 in the Maths Building at University of Liverpool NOT Netherley Valley Theatre, mentioned previously. The Math Building is 206 in E7 on the following campus map: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/maps/UoL,campus,map.pdf.

?? Indaba: noun. A Zulu word for “important meeting” that seeks “to gather the right people together at the right time to discuss the right issues”.

In 1997, at a critical juncture in the Northern Ireland peace process, Nelson Mandela extended an extraordinary invitation to all Northern Irish political parties to visit South Africa and learn from the country’s experience of reconciliation. This — unprecedented — gathering is an often overlooked chapter in the history of Ireland and South Africa; a meeting that brought together political leaders from Ireland and South Africa in a high-stakes attempt to find common ground and inspire peace. Adam McGuigan (Wake The Beast) shares the journey creating a collaborative theatre and music event, across two continents, highlighting the power of the quiet conversation.

This event is supported by the Irish Government through the Emigrant Support Fund and is held in partnership with the University of Liverpool’s Institute of Irish Studies.
Where
This event will be held at the School for Social Justice at University of Liverpool. Please use this map to find the exact location, in the Cypress Building on Chatham Street. It is building 108 of the UOL Campus Map, here.

Step inside The House, a ground-breaking immersive VR experience that invites you to explore the legacy of conflict within Northern Ireland through a new lens.

Journey through each room and discover the personal experiences of those affected by the conflict. Featuring quotations and stories drawn from research by the Commission for Victims and Survivors, this experience offers a fresh take on our  history and its impact on the present. 

Duration – 25-30 minutes (including onboarding).
Image credit: Gavin Peden.
This event will take place at Seminar Room G16 in the Maths Building at University of Liverpool NOT Netherley Valley Theatre, mentioned previously. The Math Building is 206 in E7 on the following campus map: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/maps/UoL,campus,map.pdf.

THIS IS A CHANGE IN VENUE – AND DATE – FROM OUR LEAFLET AND NEWSPAPER.

This performance involves moving about the space. If you have any concerns, please contact Big Telly to assist with mobility questions.

We’re overjoyed to be welcoming the masterful contemporary Irish folk artist John Francis Flynn to the region, in association with Now Wave. The singer and multi-instrumentalist masterfully unpicks traditional folk songs and rearranges them with an emotional force. They float in a surreal space between the past and the present, the analogue and the digital, between love and tragedy.

John’s debut album I Would Not Live Always was released on Rough Trade imprint River Lea Records in 2020, earning rave reviews and winning two awards at the RTÉ Folk Awards.

His new album, Look Over the Wall, See The Sky is a reimagining of traditional Irish music: powerful, hopeful and free. Picking up where his critically acclaimed debut left off, the forthcoming LP is a sprawling soundscape of unconventional instruments and jagged arrangements, granting the songs a certain sense of magnetism that draws listeners into its curious orbit of experimental folk.

This is a co-promoted event between Liverpool Irish Festival, Future Yard and Now Wave. Future Yard is a brilliant venue, with great green credentials; we recommend anyone taking a visit.

Stolen (1hr47, 2023, Dir. Margo Harkin) tells the story of the Mother and Baby and County Care Homes in Ireland. ♀️❤️?

This special screening has been organised as a commemorative event by Renewing Roots, with funding from the Government of Ireland’s Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth Commemorative Grant Scheme.
Stolen
Stolen reveals how women who had the misfortune to fall pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ were treated in an Ireland that was heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. Over 80,000 unmarried mothers were incarcerated in mother and baby institutions, mainly run by Catholic nuns from 1922 to 1998. Most were cruelly separated from their babies after birth. Many of the children were adopted, within Ireland and abroad, rendered untraceable and unaware of their birth story. Others were fostered out by the state as cheap farm labour from the age of six, often in circumstances abysmally devoid of care and love. 9,000 infants died in these institutions from 1922 to 1998, a rate that, on occasion, was five times the national average infant mortality rate. Survivors expose the shocking details of their treatment in a scandal that sparked a government inquiry into the fate of unmarried women who fell pregnant in 20th century Ireland.
“In this moving, wholly authoritative work Margo Harkin has produced a definitive account of this shameful history”, Sunniva O’Flynn.
Stolen received a nomination, from the Irish Film and Television Academy (IFTA), for the 2024 George Morrison Feature Documentary Award. Recently, The Irish Times voted Margo’s films Hush-A-Bye Baby and Waveriders within Top 50 Irish Films Ever list.
What to expect
Visitors will be greeted by Fréa and Festival team members, before a screening of the film. Afterwards, there will be an interview with the film’s director — Margo Harkin — before a short Q&A with panellist Patricia Carey and the audience.
Trailer
https://youtu.be/_CXFktXhofw

Renewing Roots 

Part of Fréa, a partnership of Irish charities, Renewing Roots offers free, confidential support for former residents of Ireland’s institutions now living in the north of England. This event is organised by the Renewing Roots programme, in partnership with Liverpool Irish Festival. This screening is a commemorative event to honour former residents of Ireland’s Mother and Baby and County Care Homes, who have passed, and to celebrate and honour the strength of those still with us.

For more information visit: frea.org.uk Registered Charity: 1197939
Support Services
If you — or someone you know — is affected by our event or literature, please consider consulting one of the following services:

Connect Counselling: An anonymous professional telephone counselling service for survivors of physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Freephone in the UK and Northern Ireland +44 (0) 800 477 477 77 connectcounselling.ie
ICAP: ICAP is the only specialist British-based counselling and psychotherapy service that actively supports people from the Irish community. They help those facing a range of emotional issues, including depression, anxiety and stress. Helpline: +44 (0) 207 272 7906 icap.org.uk
Irish Community Care and Fréa: Assisting with gaining access to the Irish Government’s payment scheme for mothers and children who were resident in specific institutions, they also offer some advice in accessing records and other aspects of the redress scheme. There is more information here: frea.org.uk/motherandbabyhomes
Justice for Magdalenes Research: A resource for people affected by and interested in Ireland’s Magdelene Institutions, is accessible here: jfmreasearch.com
Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation: To access the Irish Government’s report and additional information, visit gov.ie/en/collection/mbhcoi
My Data Rights: A resource for people affected by the ‘historical’ human rights violations in Ireland. My Data Rights provides information for survivors of the Irish industrial and reformatory schools. They provide information about using GDPR protocols to gain access to personal information. The website contains downloadable guides and template letters for requesting personal data and for complaining to the Data Protection Commission if necessary. This is a project of the Human Rights Law Clinic at the Irish Centre for Human Rights, NUI Galway mydatarights.ie
Samaritans, The: The Samaritans offer a non-judgmental listening service, whatever you are going through. Call free, 24-7 in the UK, on 116 123 samaritans.org
Sexual Violence Support (Northwest): A service to help locate the relevant support services for those who have suffered sexual violence across the Northwest: sexualviolencesupport.co.uk
Survivors Trust, The: The Survivors Trust has 120 member organisations based in the UK and Ireland which provide specialist support for women, men & children who have survived rape, sexual violence or childhood sexual abuse
Tuam Home Survivors Network: Survivors helping survivors tuamhomesurvivors.com.

This information was tested and accessible on 4 Sept 2023. It is not an exhaustive list of services available. You are not alone. Make contact. You will be heard.