Event type: Comedy

The Mersey Mash hits #LIF2022.

Following months of interviews, podcasts, trips across the country -not to mention a pandemic- Doug Devaney presents The Mersey Mash.

A magazine-style film and performance, The Mersey Mash collects and relates the tales community members have told him over the last two years. For those involved, the evening presents an opportunity to see yourself onscreen and witness stories from your community. For others, it’s a chance to revel and reflect -chat, critique and add your own voice- in the welcoming surroundings of the Liverpool Irish Centre and the people who make it great. This is an exchange between audience and documentarist; people and places. After tonight, the show will be remastered for an online release, ensuring the stories of The Mersey Mash last forever.

The Mersey Mash is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. ❤️? For more on Doug and his work, look up The Plastics Podcast, here.

This event will be followed on 10 Nov with an online watch party of the full feature.

This event is copromoted with Black History Month.

After the interviews, the events, the laugher and the tears, The Mersey Mash reaches its destination: the final cut.

Doug Devaney and his trusty technical crew –Sean and Charlie- will finally let their 2021/22 expedition fly into the ether; free to be watched by all and sundry! A document of Liverpool and its Irish community, The Mersey Mash bears witness to the people, places and events we share, along with the islands that influenced us all.

The Mersey Mash is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Family and Heritage work strands. For more on Doug and his work, look up The Plastics Podcast, here.

 

How has Brexit affected Irish identity?

PhD researcher Niamh Lear presents on her paper Irishness in England post-Brexit, looking specifically at regional perspectives on Irishness in England.

Following her presentation, Niamh will be interviewed by Catherine Harvey, actor, writer, broadcaster and producer of Tongue and Talk: The Dialect Poets. Over the course of the interview and following Q&A we’ll attempt to draw some comparisons between Niamh’s work and the Liverpool Irish experience, fielding questions from the audience.

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 In:Visible Women, Family and Heritage work strands. ♀️❤️?

Recording of the event

Liverpool Irish Festival invite you to meet our volunteer History Research Group, led by ArtsGroupie Director John Maguire.

Responsible for unveiling the research that now populates the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail’s site information, this group have been central to the Trail’s revitalisation, collectively spending 850+ hours on research! Closely linked with the development of this year’s book release -Liverpool Irish Famine Trail: Revive- the team discuss their findings and research activity in a presentation followed by a Q&A session. Details will also be shared about how to apply to be involved in the next stage of work, as we continue to develop the Liverpool Irish Famine Trail. For more information on the Trail visit liverpoolirishfaminetrail.com All the Festival’s Trail work has been supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

This event contributes to the Festival’s Heritage and Irish Famine work strand  (?) and takes place as part of the Family Day at Museum of Liverpool. The Family Day is sponsored by Tourism Ireland.

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.