Interest area: culture

The annual Liverpool Irish Festival features 35+ events, for adults and children, across 10 remarkable days (Thurs 17-Sun 27 Oct 2024). The festival opens with an official launch at the Liverpool Irish Centre, with performances from Sue Rynhart, Sinéad Campbell and others.

The Festival, a highlight of the UK cultural calendar, celebrates ‘departures’ as its core theme this year. Considering migrancy, displacement, changes in thinking and rejecting shame, their range of events span from children’s activities to rich historical Irish heritage. Their line-up includes an array of Irish artists and contributors from across the worlds of theatre, film, spoken word, visual arts and academia. Each connects with ‘departure’– whether focussed on the displacement of people or the advent of a new philosophy.

Programme headlines

Internationally acclaimed The Armagh Rhymers feature as part of their annual Family Day at Museum of Liverpool, as well as delivering an adult performance: The Trail of Tears –Memory (26 Oct). Linking with their new Irish Famine vigil and official annual Irish Famine memorial (27 Oct) is new song — The Ullaloo (I Cantwell, M Snape, 2024) commissioned specially this year. It will be sung here for the first time by the Liverpool Irish Centre Choir. These events precede an Irish Heritage Trust talk on The Poor Helping the Poor. Several heritage tours are included this year, complemented by films, talks and book launches. Linked directly to ‘departures’ and Liverpool Irish Famine Trail work, their Revealing Trails exhibit offers a poignant look at contemporary views on An Gorta Mór, whilst their (self-guided tour) reflects on Irish migration, settlement and legacy.

Theatre and books

In theatre, Manchán Magan brings Arán Agus Im/Bread and Butter to the Liverpool Medical Institute, comparing language with baking. Big Telly Productions consider mortality and digital afterlives in Granny Jackson’s Dead, whilst Circus 250’s Am I Irish Yet? challenges assumptions around Irishness.

Those who enjoyed Brave Maeve in 2023 will be thrilled that a second children’s volume will be released this year, with readings at Central Library (Sat 19 Oct) and The Old Library (TBC) and an exhibition at St Helens Library (Mon 7 Oct-Sat 30 Nov 204).

In:Visible Women and exhibits

Work with Fréa’s Renewing Roots project brings two films highlighting Ireland’s care abuses, both to be shown on 2 Nov at The Bluecoat. In Each Other’s Shelter We Survive and Stolen (augmented with a Margo Harkin (director) interview and panel Q&A) each contribute to their In:Visible Women work strand.

In their exhibitions they consider the departure of ash trees from our planet. Disease has swept through ash stocks. Michael ’Muck’ Murphy’s work employs the remaining wood In the Window at the Bluecoat Display Centre, whose garden facing windows peer on to the trunks of two felled ash trees. There will also be an eclectic retrospective of Irish makers on show, in the Display Centre, looking back over their In the Window exhibits from previous years.

Local talent

Celebrating local talent, specifically, they look at music and dance in their Melody Maker and George Ferguson Dance School night (Palm House, Sun 20 Oct) called …and so for now adieu/Slán leat. Referencing the North American wakes of the Irish Famine era, the two companies have collaborated to create a night of music and song that reflect leaving.

 

The Great War to Race Riots tour explores anti-black race riots that occurred in Liverpool and other seaports across the country in 1919.

This tour covers the area now known as Chinatown and the Baltic Triangle, which at the beginning of the 20th century was a densely populated and multicultural neighbourhood known locally as ‘sailor town.’ The tour follows the last journey of Charles Wotton, a 27 year old Bermudan seafarer who was murdered during the race riots. It finishes at the Queens Dock where Charles was chased into the River Mersey.

During the tour we present press reports from the run up and aftermath of the riots which, although over 100 years old, echo the fear-mongering of today. The tensions around the immediate post WWI economic slump, industrial unrest and mass demobilisation were manipulated so that black people become the scapegoat, culminating in the racial violence on the streets of Liverpool. In August of this year, history was repeated when race rioting broke out, fuelled by the ‘divide and rule’ tactics of the politicians and the mainstream media. The events of 1919 contain important lessons for today.

Starting point: Chinese Arch, Nelson Street,  L1 5DW
End point: Queens Dock, L3 4BX

The George Garrett Walking Tour covers the L1 postcode area, touring a landscape that has changed (and continues to change) dramatically. The tour explores the life, writings and activism of George Garrett a ‘militant advocate of tolerance’ who travelled the world and whose work explored the poverty and struggle of the working class in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Garrett occupied a unique and significant position as the central point of a compass that links Liverpool’s literary, cultural, and maritime history.

George Garrett (1896-1966) was a seafarer, writer, playwright, and leading radical activist and anti-racist, who travelled the world and wrote a series of short stories and plays that led George Orwell, who he met in 1936, to say: ‘I was very greatly impressed by Garrett. Had I known before that it is he who writes under the pseudonym of Matt Low in the Adelphi [a magazine published in the 1920’s and 30’s]…I would have taken steps to meet him earlier’.  Garrett was a founding member of the Merseyside Left Theatre and Unity Theatre.

Following the 1919 race riots, Garrett was one of the few white allies who defended the Black community and pointed out the divide and rule tactics of politicians, the media, and even trade union leaders. His erudite speech, delivered at a public meeting in the aftermath of the violence, still resonates today as we continue to face class and racial inequalities. In 1922 Garrett was one of the leaders of the first National Hunger March from Liverpool to London.

Start Point: The Women’s Organisation, 54 Saint James Street, L1 0AB
End Point: Seaman’s Home Gates at Liverpool One by John Lewis