The Wife of Michael Cleary is the first piece of music theatre from composer and performer Maz O’Connor.
Inspired by traditional Irish music, her piece tells the true story of Bridget Cleary, who lived in Co. Tipperary over a century ago.
In 1895, at the age of 26, Bridget was burned to death by her husband and family. They claimed they had not killed Bridget, but a changeling left in her place by fairies. News of this shocking case spread through Ireland and across the sea to England, where it was used as fodder in the Home Rule debates.
This new work explores the folklore and superstitions that were rife in an Ireland on the verge of great change. It highlights how societies overlook and enable violence against women and asks ‘how much has really changed for women in the past century?’.
Join us for a stripped-back evening of music from the show, alongside the traditional music that inspired it. This is a unique chance to preview aspects of The Wife of Michael Cleary as Maz and her team develop it towards full production.
Completely informal opportunity to come a long for a tune.
Bring an instrument and a will to play along. No doubt there’ll be a few Festival friends there to help bring the gang together, whilst a fully stocked bar -in one of the most historic and quirkiest pubs in Liverpool- can ease you towards the dawn.
The play will be broadcast on YouTube (search for the Liverpool Irish Festival channel), which requires no tickets. If you would like to be part of the live Zoom transmission, and take part in the online Q&A, you will need to book. Ticket numbers are limited. Once you have booked, Eventbrite (the booking system) will send you all the necessary links to gain access to the event on the evening.
We are proud to state this event is linked with Black History Month and the Cuture Liverpool programme.
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.
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.
Launch follow up: Adam Oronowicz kindly recorded some of the Festival launch, which can be viewed below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPqhjq791Pg
Original listing
With opening speeches, music and a live preview of our newly adopted Festival theme song, our launch brings Festival friends together.
The Centre, our natural home, provides a convivial space in which to toast ‘Sláinte’ (health) to all those who join us, have helped us and will be with us for Festivals ahead. Book ahead to ensure you have the best seats!
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Attendance at the launch does not give you automatic attendance to The Old Time Sailors. You will need to book tickets seperately for this event.
We are proud to state this event is linked with Black History Month and the Cuture Liverpool programme.
Commuity invitation
Here at the Liverpool Irish Festival, we are very aware that representation has become a major part of our everyday work. We have had to find a voice to support our Irish communities against ignorance arising through Brexit; against general and systemic misunderstandings caused by assumptions about who the Irish in Britain are and the need to challenge the widely asserted by incorrect view that Irishness is white.
We know these things are wrong and that, often times, they echo what is happening to and in other communities.
We want to make our Festival open to Liverpool’s often overlooked communities and remind everyone that the Liverpool Irish Festival is for those with an Irish background -of any heritage- as well as those with no connection to Ireland at all! Arts and culture are for sharing; internally between those whom identify the culture as theirs and externally, so others can see why and how unique customs, creative exchanges and histories draw communities closer, drive them apart and/or help people with their identify.
This year’s Festival theme is exchange. Every event contains an exchange within it and we hope we can create exchanges with you. We welcome you -and the community you support- to our events and hope that you will share our specific invite to you widely. Parts of our programme this year involve individuals of Chinese Irish, Irish Caribbean and other Irish dual-heritages in a bid to start showing that Ireland’s people -it’s diaspora and communities abroad are a myriad of people, dreams and ambitions. We hope you will join us to celebrate some exceptional stories, art and history.
You can find everything you need to know about our events programme -and our Liverpool Irish Famine Trail project- at liverpoolirishfestival.com and you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram on @LivIrishFest. before signing off, I would encourage anyone that wanted to connect with our programme and the notifications coming out ahead of the Festival to sign up for our enewsletter – you can do that here: https://www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/sign-up/ This allows us to speak directly with you about the programme and community news updates.
In 2020 Gael Linn and An tUltach partnered with the Liverpool Irish Festival to create a one-off creative commission to celebrates Irish language and folklore.
Selected for this commission, was storyteller and artist Nuala Monaghan. The resulting work tells five key stories from Irish myth and legend, each with an artwork to help communicate the power of the story. Shown among the Calderstones, that connect Liverpool with Ireland through thousands of years of use and symbolism, this exhibit helps to reveal the connections folklore continues to have on our modern world.
This exhibition was co-commissioned with Gael Linn and An tUltach. Gael Linn is a non-profit and non-governmental organisation focused on the promotion of the Irish language and the arts. An tUltach is Ireland’s oldest Irish language literary magazine, established in 1924.
Also see The Gods of Old; a Hallowe’en Storytelling listing, Sun 31 Oct.
Irish Film London is a not-for-profit organisation that promotes and supports the work of Irish filmmakers across all genres of film and television.
The organisation runs a year-round programme of screenings and events both online and in cinemas. Events are mostly in London, but also around the UK, and now -through our online platform- Irish Film From Home, they have a global reach.
This year, Irish Film London have partnered with the Festival to include a specially curated selection of short films that reflects this year’s theme of ‘exchange’ and, particularly, the challenges faced by the LGBTQI+ community. Through comedy, drama, animation and documentary, these short films delve into romantic love, overcoming fears and prejudices, family secrets and being open to life’s surprises. We hope you enjoy this exchange of visual storytelling, from the uniquely Irish perspectives of new and experienced filmmakers.
First Kiss (With a Girl)
A startlingly inventive experimental short that has the longest, sexiest kiss by confectionery you’ve ever seen! Yes, you read that right! The film explores that special sort of 11pm, tipsy, nightclub magic of late adolescence. This is a kitschy, low-fi, bubble-gum-sweet glance at queer intimacy.
Pogonophobia
In director Thomas Ryan’s award-winning short film, Pogonophobia, he addresses a little known -but truly debilitating- phobia: the fear of beards. In this comedy drama, his protagonist, Cyril, is a sufferer who hates leaving his flat. Forced out one evening, an act of homophobic bullying and a chance encounter at Grand Canal Dock, Dublin, will change that forever.
True
Shane Collins’ short drama, True, is about a grandfather’s struggles with his identity and his grandson’s homophobia. The film reflects Shane’s pride in his Irish heritage and intention to make films with truth and honesty at their core.
Becoming Cherrie
Award-winning short documentary from artist and filmmaker, Nicky Larkin, about actor and performer, Matthew Cavan, AKA Cherrie Ontop, Belfast’s beloved drag artist, who is living with HIV in a conservative Northern Irish society.
The Full Package
Trevor Kaneswaran’s debut short film The Full Package is light-touch comedy that challenges assumptions we make about those we meet, online and in person. It is about being open to unexpected opportunities.
Hold the Sausage
Hold the Sausage is a cross-generational comedy, set at the dinner table as ‘Nanny’ tries to grapple with her daughter and her granddaughter’s’ revelations and fears about what the neighbours will think. Chloe Muldoon plays all four parts to great comic effect.
Image from First Kiss (With a Girl), Clodagh Chapman
Orginal event listing
The Cultural Connectedness Exchange Network introduces Irish and Northern Irish artists to Irish and Northern Irish cultural commissioners and providers (mainly in England).
Together we work to determine
the needs of Irish and Northern Irish artists, particularly those working in England (or with England-based organisations)
barriers faced within the arts sector, and in reference to specific issues such as Brexit or Covid-19
how cultural providers/commissioners can provide value/service for artists
how we can connect work and best represent Irish and Northern Irish artists.
We meet online in a bi-monthly meeting. These meetings advance our initial ideas, presented in this paper. We work together to create a positive, representational network to support and promote Irish and Northern Irish arts and culture in England (and Britain more widely).
This is a valuable network for any Irish or Northern Irish artist wanting to work in public art delivery. Additionally, it is a resource for cultural providers and commissioners who lead with and use Irish and Northern Irish work.
The network is still young and welcomes new additions. If you need any further information, please contact the Liverpool Irish Festival Director, Emma Smith, on emma@liverpoolirishfestival.com. You can find out more, here; where you can watch all of the previous sessions, download papers and see our membership details.
20 July (indicative) agenda
NB – this is an indicative agenda only; it is subject to review as we approach the meeting.
Introductions and work sharing
Identifying new barriers and solutions
Feedback from Arts Council England meeting, held between ACE, Liverpool Irish Festival and (Leeds) Irish Arts Foundation (14 June 2021)
Irish In Britain update on Irish APPG advances
Review our toolkits: what do we want to see and who can help build them?
Directed by Rachel Garfield, The Struggle is a video trilogy consisting of three single channel films.
The Trilogy
Each film reflects on the convergences and differences between peoples’ views in the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Looking at politics (The Straggle, 2012, 20 mins), the military (Opening Up, 2015, 11 mins) and religion (Glimpse, 2020, 15 mins), the films ask ‘what do we leave behind and what do we take forward in our lives?’.
Glimpse is the chief reason that Rachel made contact with us. As the final film in the trilogy, Glimpse is concerned with the relationship between religion -in this case Catholicism- and the individual. Liverpool’s Catholic tradition, closely associated with its relationship to Irish immigration (more here), is contextualised against the history of Catholicism in England. What are the legacies of that history in how people think about their relationship to Catholicism and Liverpool today?
Maker interests
Rachel’s primary interests focus on the complexities of peoples’ lived relationship with the world. To their ideals and to countering the simplistic understanding of attachments to place, history and community. The films take on aspects of society to think about the relationship between the individual, their context and wider society as an intergenerational conversation. Additionally, they investigate context and and community as an intergenerational conversation.
Maker biography
Rachel Garfield is an artist, writer and Fine Art teacher (University of Reading), who has exhibited at The Hatton Gallery, The Whitechapel Art Gallery, Focal Point Gallery and Beaconsfield Art Gallery among others. International exhibitions include Galerie du Presbytere (Romorantin-Lanthenay, France), Babylon Cinema (Berlin, Germany) and Arizona State University Museum (USA). For more on Rachel’s work, visit her website.
Watching
To access each of the films, please return to this page during the course of the Festival (from 10am Thurs 21-midnight Sun 31 Oct), where they will be operational during the Festival period. We recommend expanding the film frame to full screen, to maximise your enjoyment and to witness Rachel’s art at its richest. We are grateful to Rachel for sharing her work with the Festival.
The Struggle is commissioned by Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall (London).
The Straggle (Part I)
Opening Up (Part II)
Watcher notice: There are no overt or photographic images of acts of violence in this film, but there are sounds of gunfire and high pitched ringing, which some *may* find disturbing.
Glimpse (Part III)
Part I received support from Goldsmiths; Part II received support from Newcastle University and Part III received support from the University of Reading.
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