Event type: Comedy

My Truth and Yours is the fifth in The Suicide Chronicle series, a project led by artist Mark Storor which aims to develop a collective, creative language to share the infinitely complex experience of suicide. ❤️?

 “Acknowledging the truth
I meet my core.
Whose truth?
Mine”.

This film was made with 23 residents of Tallaght, Dublin, many of whom connected through NINA For Life, a suicide awareness support group.

Mothers, sisters, friends, fathers, uncles, neighbours, daughters and sons, impacted by suicide offer us a vivid view into their truths and give space for the truths of others. These may not always sit comfortably alongside one another, but they are undeniable in their honesty. 

A poetic visual journey without a clear beginning, middle, or end, it captures the personal experiences of a community, departing from over-simplified explanations to instead show tender, intimate, and sometimes deeply private moments.

We are invited to keep vigil with those on the screen, and to share in the experience with one another as an audience. Together we witness a series of actions that give voice to feelings and experiences often unseen or unheard. The film offers us a portal into another place, giving us a different sense of time and space for contemplation and reflection.
Mark Storor
Mark Storor is an award-winning artist with an international reputation and extensive experience of working collaboratively with a wide range of organisations and communities, including work in hospitals, prisons, schools and housing estates. Working in the unique space between live art and theatre, he has been described in the British press as: ‘a genuinely visionary theatre maker’, ‘an alchemist’ and ‘one of the most distinctive voices in British theatre’.
Access

My Truth and Yours references suicide, experiences of bereavement by suicide, and miscarriage. Includes swearing and nudity
This sharing will begin with an in-person, spoken introduction and we will hold space for conversation after the screening with those who have been a part of making it
Ground floor, step free access
Accessible toilets and baby changing facilities available on the ground floor
Disabled parking spaces close by on Wood Street and Bold Street and to the rear of the building
Nearest railway stations are Liverpool Central (a three-minute walk away) and Liverpool Lime Street (a 12-minute walk away).

If you have any access requirements, questions about My Truth and Yours or the screenings please do be in touch: emily@heartofglass.org.uk
Full credits
The Suicide Chronicles: Chronicle Five, My Truth and Yours (2023): Amanda Ellis, Annie, Carol, Daniel, Danny Haas, Fergal Feeney, Glynis, Jean Haas, Jenna, Jenny, Joan, Kelly, Linda Bridgeman, Lorraine Morris, Martin, Michele Donohoe, Noeleen Fulham, Pat, Patricia Cooke, Sami Corcoran, Sharon Doyle and Tracey with Mark Storor.

Cinematography by Chris Keenan
Music composed and performed by Jules Maxwell
Mise en scène by Tadashi Kato
Lighting by Ian Brown
Photography by Stephen King
Narration by Veronica Dyas
Poem written and voiced by Daniel
Foreground and background shadow by Christian.

Gratitude
Co-commissioned by Tallaght Community Arts and Heart of Glass. Supported by Creative Ireland and Arts Council England. Produced by Heart of Glass. With special thanks to NINA For Life, Kingswood Community Centre and Kingswood Community College. Filmed at Mill Studios.

Liverpool Irish Festival is proud to partner with Heart of Glass to present The Suicide Chronicles, Chronicle Five: My Truth and Yours.

The event will also to be run at 6pm, Mon 21 Oct at FACT, Free (spaces limited), book online.

On your way to and from #LIF2024 events, why not stop and behold the beauty and wonder of the River of Light and the following installations:

Rangoli Mirrored Cosmos – Mann Island 
Illusion Hole – Royal Albert 
Positive Spin – Royal Albert Dock 
Lightbattle III – Royal Albert Dock 
Firefly Field – Liverpool Parish Church 
Bunch of Tulips – Liverpool ONE 
Bubblesque – Mann Island 
No Place Like Gnome – Derby Square 
Checkmate – Exchange Flags.

These pieces join Piano Walk (Pier Head South), Impulse (Pier Head North) and LAPS at The Strand. Remember: Fri 1 Nov marks the final night of Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights. There’s a full write up here.

Completely informal opportunity to come a long for a tune. The second seisiún of two in the Festival, the other takes place the previous Fri (19 Oct 2022). ??

Bring an instrument, your voice and a will to play along. There’ll be Festival friends to help bring the gang together, whilst a fully stocked bar — in one of the most historic and quirkiest pubs in Liverpool — eases you towards the dawn. This event gets busy quickly and sometimes it’s ‘standing room only’, so be prepared to ‘hotch up’ and swap places so everyone can get a piece of the action.

In 2021, Liverpool Irish Festival began our custodianship of the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail.

We formed a volunteer History Research Group (who’ve since undertaken 1,300+ hours of research) and released a book: Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive (available in the Museum’s gift shop or here).❤️??

Having trained in tour creation and management – and thoroughly researched the Irish objects on display in Museum of Liverpool – the History Research Group now lead tours of the Museum of Liverpool’s Irish objects. Visitors will be provided with headsets so they can hear the tour guide throughout the tour whatever activity is taking place around them. These headsets work over hearing aids.

Visitors who take these in-person tours will additionally take in the Pilotage Building, just outside the Museum. Tours are anticipated to take approximately 45-60mins, depending on audience questions. To keep this very simple, people who would like to join are asked to congregate under the large screen in the Museum’s atrium. Tours will leave at 10.30am, 12pm and 2.30pm. There is no booking system, but if a tour proves extremely popular, visitors may be asked to wait for the next tour.

These activities have been made possible with funds from The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

Taking the 1957 original BBC radio-play version of All That Fall, audiences will listen to the piece before taking part in a Q&A with Festival Coordinator Pascal O’Loughlin. ❤️??

Pascal  — a writer and former National Poetry Library archivist — does not claim to be a Beckett-expert, but his insight into prose, poetry and Irish literature will surely lead to an interesting conversation. 

Querying the departures in the piece, and the use of sound effects, listeners can raise questions about Beckett’s intentions and the relevance of the piece today or simply ask Pascal why this was his Festival pick.

All The Fall is a one act play, which follows Maddy Rooney on her journey to meet her husband from the train. Divided by three time frames – getting there, the station and the return leg – we encounter characters, mortality and deep-rooted passions. Believed to be based on Beckett’s hometown of Foxrock, Boghill presents its modernism and its traditionalism in equal measure.

The event takes place in the Hornby Room at Liverpool Central Library.

For anyone that wants to pre-listen to the play, it is available online, here.

Readers can see a short bio for Pascal, here.

A move to a new place is, in many ways, like writing a poem. ?

Both involve a return to ground-zero and require bravery to investigate the unknown (or the blank page).

Vitor’s talk will illustrate the above analogy, with the process of making Harry Kernoff’s Guest, a book about the Irish-Jewish painter’s errands between London and Dublin. He’ll compare those journeys with his own between Portugal and Ireland (and some other parts of the continent). Beyond geographical travels, the talk also explores Kernoff’s appetite for discovering the small and mundane in everyday life. Whilst Vitor’s book is about the Emerald Isle, inspired by a man in love with Dublin,

he’ll also explore how embracing Irishness has strongly influenced his own work and, to some extent, his way of life.

Harry Kernoff’s Guest was written during a period of unemployment. At that time, Vitor had to move from room to room eight times in eight months (true story!). This experience informs the talk with a sense and theme of displacement. The Art of Departures should be of interest to poetry enthusiasts, painting oddities, ex-pats and the sorts of adventurous souls who allow themselves to be devotees of the fair city of Dublin.

Vitor Vicente is a Portuguese author who has lived abroad since 2006, between Spain, Poland and Hungary, and currently lives in Bray, Ireland. He’s the author of 12 published books. Travel runs through all of them. His latest title is the poetry collection Harry Kernoff’s Guest, which also shares reproductions of the paintings that inspired the writing. 

The event will be hosted on Zoom and bookers will be sent the link ahead of the event.

Here’s a link to purchase Vitor’s book. Though this is a Portuguese site, it exports internationally.
Recording

Links
Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

What affects accents?

Nominated as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, Tony Crowley’s Liverpool: A Memoir of Words (2023) is a work of creative non-fiction that combines the study of language in Liverpool with social history, the history of the English language, and personal memoir. 

A beautifully written book — based on a lifetime’s academic research — it explores the relationship between language and memory and demonstrates the ways in which words are enmeshed in history (and history in words). Starting with ‘ace’ and weaving its way alphabetically to ‘Z-Cars’, the work illustrates the deep relationship that has been forged in the past two-hundred-years or so between a form of language, a place and a social identity. 

In this talk, Tony — born and raised in working-class Liverpool in the 1960s and 70s — will discuss Liverpool: A Memoir Of Words in relation to the (im)possibility of leaving Liverpool and the joy of linguistic homecoming. He’ll consider topics such as the story of the Irish roots of Liverpool English, the multicultural complexity of the form, our common use of ‘plazzymorphs’ and the ways that Liverpudlian words exemplify standard processes of linguistic development. 

‘A gold mine of a book’, Frank Cottrell-Boyce.

Open to all age groups, whether you’re a keen Gaelic Football player or have never heard of the game!

Come along to our ‘give it a go’ Festival session, 1pm-4pm.

John Mitchel’s GAA coaches will be there to welcome everyone, offering a great opportunity to find out a bit more about the game and our club; with a chance to meet our members and play a bit of Gaelic Football. There’ll be ‘blitz’ sessions for young ones, from fully qualified and checked coaches (guardians to stay throughout). From 2.30pm-4.30pm, people can take part in or watch the underage Gaelic Football Tournament.

This is an outdoor event in October. Please be ready with waterproofs and/or sun cream as needed and know any one of you could get muddy or grass-stained!

For more details on the club follow Facebook @johnmitchelsliverpool and X @JohnMitchelsGAA 

❤️?? 

❤️?? Brave Maeve is a Liverpool girl.

In 2023 she was taken on an amazing adventure, through Irish folklore, when something is stolen from her Grandad Mac by a pesky púca. Now she’s back, returning a lost item from the Famine to an Irish King lost in the annals of time!

In this richly illustrated (second) book, the reading will be voiced by author and artist Stu Harrison. Witty, energetic and designed for kids aged 7-11, this is a fun event to spend with a child in your life. 

Stu will bring some of his illustrated cut outs, so kids can pose with a sword, Brave Maeve and púca. Bring your cameras! Book copies will be available. 

This event was made possible via a co-commissioning fund, in partnership with Gael Linn, An tUltach and Gaelbhratach.

The Bluecoat Display Centre and Liverpool Irish Festival are delighted to announce our 2024 maker: Muck Murphy; continuing our annual In The Window partnership. ❤️??

This event provides visitors with the chance to speak with Muck directly, about his work. Centred on commemorating the ash tree, after disease spread through ash stock globally (including two in the garden of The Bluecoat), Muck shows what can be done with ‘dead wood’. Refreshments will be provided on arrival.

Friends of the Bluecoat Display Centre will receive a 10% discount on all purchases during the event.

Booking is needed. Please call +44(0) 151 709 4014, to book a place, or stop by the gallery to reserve a space with a member of staff. This event has a recommended donation price of £10 per ticket, providing a speaker fee for Muck.