Event type: Comedy

Silence often follows disaster.

Drawing together two impressive writers, Famished: Women and the Irish Famine comprises a performance of Cherry Smyth’s poem Famished, followed by a presentation by Jaki McCarrick on her play (recently shown in New York): Belfast Girls. Both works handle the Irish Famine, the poverty it continues to reveal and bearing witness to a lost generation.

Famished is a poetic sequence by Cherry Smyth, exploring the Irish Famine and how imperialism contributed to the largest refugee crisis of the nineteenth century. Delivered with composer Ed Bennett and vocalist Lauren Kinsella, her poetry draws on the power of collective lament, using music and expanded singing.

Belfast Girls is a play that follows five women on their flight from Famine to refuge in Australia, bereft of choice, money and nourishment. McCarrick will speak of the inspiration for the work and her plans for it now.

An in-conversation Q&A follows, in which Smyth and McCarrick reflect on each other’s work and take questions from the audience.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands. ♀️❤️? It is delivered in partnership with Liverpool Everyman and takes place in the downstairs bistro.

Photographic discussion workshop on the life and influence of Frederick Douglass.

Famed African-American abolitionist and social reformer Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) sailed to Ireland from Liverpool in 1845, witnessing at first hand the suffering caused by the Irish Famine. It is understood two Irishmen inspired Douglass to escape his enforced slavery in America, which remains celebrated in a mural on the Falls Road, Belfast. Before sailing to Ireland, it is understood that Frederick stayed in a temperance house in Liverpool, later speaking at Hope Place (where now stands the Liverpool Everyman, site of half of our workshops).

Frederick Douglass was a master at using early photography to aid representation. Always presenting as well-dressed, proud and educated, Douglass repeatedly used his image to speak about Black rights and break the visual culture of ‘Black exoticism’. He adopted Western styles of dress and hair styling, sitting in classic portrait poses to show himself as ‘like all others’.

Ruth McHugh invites you to have your image taken, amidst items you feel help to represent you. Ruth will develop these images and work them into a Daguerreotype-style and participants will receive these sepia portraits within a month of the workshop.

You will work with resources that highlight the struggles Douglass -and all people oppressed for their race- face. As the workshop develops, participants will talk through some of Douglass’s experiences; learn about his connections with Liverpool and Ireland and see what form his actions against racism took. In doing so, we can learn something about our image, what a selfie says about us and how we identify with our representation.

These workshops contribute to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family, Nook and Cranny Spaces and Heritage workstrands. ♀️❤️??
Pick your workshop carefully
There will be four workshops:

9.30am and 1pm, Thurs 27 Oct. International Slavery Museum (youth focussed)
9.30am and 1pm, Fri 28 Oct. Everyman Bistro (adult focussed).

When booking, please be sure to select and note the correct workshop time and location. See our location listing for each venue, using the links above.
Note on age and relevance:
This workshop focusses on ideas of representation, using Frederick Douglass’s life and use of photography. Our youth focussed sessions are geared for over-12s.

Please note – anyone under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and this requires 2 tickets (min), one the young person and one for the adult. If you have not booked these, please do so.
During the workshops with young people, we will ask that no social media is used.

Kieran Murray’s photography evokes nostalgia from the off.

The rich palette of worn colours; the textures of paint, rust and plaster, take us to a time way back in -or slightly before- our memory, where things are familiar, but distressed; recognisable, but transforming. His affection for the subject seeps in to the work and we find ourselves clamouring to find a memory we can attach to that ewer, that horseshoe or that Christmas envelope. Here, Kieran helps us explore the world he is showing us in his images, by talking through some of the digital exhibition images and taking us thorough his image finding and story building.

This is a live online event, hosted on Zoom. People will book via an Eventbrite link (available here shortly) and Zoom details will be sent closer to the date with links to join. Zoom is free to use, but users will have to have downloaded and installed the software ahead of the event.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. ❤️?

Event recording

This 2-hour walk through the former heartland of Liverpool’s Irish community considers schools, statues and graveyards.

It explores what remains of the area’s rich heritage, rousing some old ghosts along the way.

Led by historian Greg Quiery, this walk explores the dense history of a world-famous district. Featuring stories of heroic men and women; footballers and rock stars; two hidden statues; a graveyard and the legends of ‘Dandy Pat’ and James Carling. The walk ends at St Anthony’s Church, a short bus ride from town.

Those interested in this walk, may also be interested in the in-person Irish Heritage walk (see event listing and book early to avoid disappointment) or the self-guided Liverpool Irish Famine Trail liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com, accompanied by the Festival’s book Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive, available online at liverpoolirishfestival.com/shop.

This in an outdoor walk in October; please be weather prepared, comfortable and hydrated. We will observe Covid-19 regulations, as at the date of the walk, and ask all walkers to comply with prevailing guidance.

Ticket holders should join Greg outside Liverpool Central Library ready for the walk start time.

This tour contributes ot the Festival’s Family, Nook and Cranny Spaces and Heritage strands of work. ❤️??

PLEASE NOTE: the correct start point for this tour is Central Library NOT St Luke’s as indicated on Page 27 of the Festival Guide. This was an error and is being flagged wherever we can. As far as we know all other entries were correct. Bookers will be informed in their event message follow-ups.

Comhaltas and The Armagh Rhymers take it turns playing (spooky) fun games and music, to dance and play along with, whilst the veil between our world and ‘the Other’ is at its thinnest. We invite you to bring along the kids -in their best creepy dress-up (or not)- and hope adults will play along.

With gift bags for the children -and scarily silly prizes for best Samhain costumes- we encourage false eyes and teeth, wigs and props (store bought or otherwise). We will you to grab the green paint, some webbing and last year’s bat toy; practice your deepest, scariest ‘mwah-ha-ha’ and get your heads bolts ready for the silliest Monster’s Ball of the season!

Activities are mainly geared for kids between 4-12 years old, with adult supervision. Kids aged 18-118 years old are welcome, but require child-supervision! Only pretend broken hips on this dance floor and if you’re going to leave your teeth on the table, please make sure you don’t need them for your Taytos!

Discover your play!

Join Hawkseed Theatre for a 2.5-hour intensive workshop aimed at performers wanting to connect with their sense of play and the radical joy of performing. This sell out workshop will be led by Artistic Directors of Hawkseed Theatre, Anna Berentzen and Hannah Donelon, on the tail of their tour of A Very Odd Birthday Party.

As Hawskeed say: “A radical space to challenge yourself; trust your instincts and explore techniques to find that sense-of-play when approaching performance. Alongside practical exercises, we’ll share exclusive extracts of the new play A Very Odd Birthday Party, offering you a chance to ask us questions about Hawkseed and our work as a theatre company and, importantly, providing a space for you to connect and network with other artists in the space. We want to form a community of artists who can inspire, challenge and support one another. Join us to be part of this!

“This workshop is for over 18s. We have a budget to support participant access requirements, so please get in touch with us at hawkseedtheatre@gmail.com if you have any questions regarding this. Additionally, we have 5 ‘Pay What You Decide’ tickets available. These are aimed at people for whom finance is a barrier. Please only book one of these tickets if finance would prevent you from booking a £5 ticket. It will be kept confidential who has booked which kind of ticket”.

This event contributes to the Festivals In:Visibsle Women and Nook and Crany Spaces work strands.

What did Shakespeare think of the Irish?

How did he include them in his plays? What does this say about views of Irishness today?

Explore the context for and interpretations of the Bard’s inclusions and explore what tropes, prevailing politics and characteristics he adopted to include Irish people in his stories.

Part seminar, part workshop; participants will hear from Catherine Harvey (actor, writer and broadcaster) -Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at The University of Niagara- and will workshop mixed-heritage approaches with Ashleigh Nugent (author, performer and creative Director of RiseUp CIC).

This event is held in partnership with Shakespeare North Playhouse.
Format

Context and examples; othering and characters
Iambic pentameter and sonnets
Representation participation
Playback
Survey.

Speakers
Catherine Harvey:
Catherine Harvey is an actor, writer and broadcaster.  She is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 3, 4 and The World Service on arts programmes such as Poetry Please and Words and Music, as well as drama, comedy and documentaries. Her documentaries frequently draw on her North West and Irish roots – such as Colomendy: A Rite of Passage, exploring the cultural impact of the North Wales camp on generations of Liverpool schoolchildren; Witness: The Last Keeper of the Light, about the last lighthouse keeper on Skellig Michael in Co. Kerry; and five series of Tongue and Talk: the Dialect Poets, investigating the language and poetry of areas including Lancashire, the Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, and most recently Liverpool.

Catherine has written for and performed at theatres around the country, including the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, The Bush, Theatre Clwyd and Bolton Octagon. Her TV and film credits range from Emmerdale, Holby and Casualty, to Agatha Christie’s Partners in Crime, Oscar and Lucinda and Red Dwarf. She most recently appeared on TV in Coronation Street, has just finished working on Ridley Scott’s next film, Napoleon, and is currently filming the 6-part series The Burning Girls for Paramount. She is Artistic Director of the poetry performance group Rhyme & Reason, and a Visiting Professor of Shakespeare Studies at The University of Niagara.
Ashleigh Nugent:
Ashleigh Nugent is an author, performer and creative director at RiseUp CiC. He was nominated Artist of the Year in the Liverpool City Region Culture and Creativity Awards 2021. Ashleigh’s debut novel, LOCKS, will be published by Picador/Pan Macmillan in June 2023. LOCKS won the 2013 Commonword Memoir Competition and received an Honorable Mention in the 2021 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards.

Ashleigh’s other publishing credits include poetry anthologies, academic journals and magazines. He has also written, performed and curated for theatres including Liverpool’s Everyman Theatre, Live Theatre in Newcastle and the Shakespeare North Playhouse, where he is now a special advisor on the Learning and Engagement Committee.

Ashleigh’s company, RiseUp CiC, delivers a programme that empowers prisoners to turn their lives around by taking control of their own thoughts, feelings and actions. The RiseUp programme has produced life changing impact in prisons throughout the UK since 2015.

This event is copromoted with Black History Month.

*SOLD OUT*

An impressive tour of Liverpool’s waterfront and docks on a rare wide-beam canal boat, The Pride of Sefton.

With four tours per day, over two days, sailors will join the vessel at 11am, 12.30pm, 2pm or 3.30pm on Fri 28 or Sat 29 Oct. Each trip lasts between 45-60mins depending on the currents. The Pride of Sefton will be moored and accessible from the Royal Albert Dock. Take the ramp down to the jetty in front of Tate Liverpool to meet the crew. Each trip can only take a small number of people, so booking is essential.

Passengers start their tour in the Royal Albert Dock, sailing to Canning Dock, Salthouse Dock, Duke’s Dock, Wapping Dock, Queens Dock, Coburg Dock and Brunswick Dock before returning to the mooring. Lasting almost an hour, passengers will hear about the birth of the docks, their history and the people that made them, transforming a sleepy fishing village in to a City of Empire.

Children must be supervised by those who bring them.

It is worth noting that sailing can be affected by weather. In the event of bad weather we will do all we can to contact you let you know if the boat will sail.

Please note: the mooring location/meeting point for The Pride of Sefton has changed from the original listings. All bookers have been emailed with details (as of 25 Oct 2022).

These tours contribute to the Festival’s Family, Nook and Cranny Spaces and Heritage work strands. ❤️??

Liverpool is famous for the birds on the magnificent Liver Building (the first ever skyscraper in the UK), but there are over 100 Liver Birds in the City.

Join ArtsGroupie for a lively, fun two-hour walking tour ‘safari’ around the City Centre. The walk starts at Bluecoat, talking participants on a Liver Bird-spotting mission, learning about the history of Liverpool along the way. The tour finishes near the waterfront.

Bookers are asked to wear comfortable shoes, ensuring you visited restrooms before the tour commences. You are also advised to bring an umbrella or a waterproof, if rain is forecast (sun cream in the unlikely event of glorious weather in Oct!). Binoculars are a bonus (to see the birds up close and in intricate detail)!

This tour is suitable for any one with a good enough attention span -and mobility (or mobility support) to stay on the move for 2 hours.

Meet at the School Lane entrance of Bluecoat, in the courtyard.

Image © Suzi Dorey.

This tour contributes to the Festival’s Family, Nook and Cranny Spaces and Heritage work strands. ❤️??

Author Caelainn Hogan discusses her book The Republic of Shame, centred on the Mother and Baby and County Institutions of Ireland, with Dr Maev McDaid.

Until alarmingly recently, the Catholic Church -acting in concert with the Irish state- operated a network of institutions for the concealment, punishment and exploitation of ‘fallen women’. In the Magdalene laundries, girls and women were incarcerated and condemned to servitude. And in the mother-and-baby institutions, women who had become pregnant out of wedlock were hidden from view and -in most cases- their babies were adopted – sometimes illegally.

“At least in The Handmaid’s Tale they value babies, mostly. Not so in the true stories here”, Margaret Atwood responding to Republic of Shame.

More then 100,000 people are thought to have been directly affected by Mother and Baby and County Institutions in Ireland. Many of these men and women moved to England. Join Caelainn Hogan (author, Republic of Shame) and Liverpool-based researcher and survivor-advocate, Dr Maev McDaid, in a panel chaired by the Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool.

This is a partnership event delivered between the Festival and the Institute of Irish Studies at University of Liverpool.

This event contributes to the Festival’s In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands.