Galway City Culture Night takes place on Friday 23 September. Galway City will host over 50 events with 200 artists participating in a diverse programme of visual arts, music, film and storytelling.
VISUAL ARTS
Spend your Culture Night immersed in artwork by local and international artists. Kicking off the programme is Just Art It, the creative community in the Westend with hands-on print demonstrations led by visual artist and printmaker Elena Santos from 5pm. The event will also provide a talk and practical demonstration on the practice of printmaking editioning and will introduce each of the studio artists on display at the Just Art It gallery.
From 6pm Forge Artists Aoife Natsumi Frehan and Emma O’ Toole will deliver two Pumpkins and Prosecco workshops, a fun and inclusive introduction to ceramics. The participants will get to decorate, paint and design using underglaze. There is limited space in the studio, so booking through Eventbrite is advised.
Galway Cartoon Festival will launch their 2022 Festival Programme on Culture Night at the Galway Distillery featuring the opening of the exhibition Moon Cartoons from 6pm. It’s sure to be a night of great fun with guest cartoonists, illustrators, visual artists, and animators from Ireland and the UK.
Join the artists of the Array Collective in a lively chat and Q&A about their Turner Prize winning work The Druthaib’s Ball currently on exhibit in Galway Arts Centre. The Druthaib's Ball is a built installation that invites audiences into an immersive experience reflecting the lively community hub of the Irish síbin, a long-established tradition of an illegal bar and space of contradiction, dark humour, and craic.
MUSIC
Join Galway Arts Centre and Áras na nGael for ceol agus craic in the unique setting of the immersive installation of The Druthaib’s Ball with traditional Irish musicians Ciarán de Burca + Cairde in this open trad session! Expect traditional Irish music, singing and chat and the invitation to join in a sing song! All taking place in the centre of a unique and immersive Turner Prize winning artists installation from 10pm to midnight!
Galway City will host a night of uplifting singing from two of Galway's finest choirs. The IGNITE gospel choir singing gospel greats and the VILLAGE Choir performing modern contemporary music. A Sing-along will be encouraged!
St. Nicholas’ Church hosts an informal evening of song from 8pm hosted by Galway's premier male acapella vocal group, The Galway Baytones. The Baytones will perform songs from their extensive repertoire, ranging from classical to Irish traditional to contemporary. They will be joined by their special guest for the evening, Gerry Hanberry, whose unique blend of poetry and song has entertained Galway audiences for many years.
Visit the Galway Atlantaquaria for THALASSA – Sounds of the Sea, a night of music and marine life, in the deep ocean depths of Galway Atlantaquaria. Culture Night in Galway Atlantaquaria features sound installation artists, Uilleann pipe players, and ukulele artists all performing individual musical expressions throughout the evening. Featuring Francis Heery, Galway Ukers, and Eugene Lambe, it promises to be an eclectic mix of sea and sound.
LITERATURE AND STORYTELLING
The Black Gate presents BEYOND THE GATE, a hybrid evening of literature and music curated by The Black Gate and featuring some of Galway’s finest and most prolific writers and performers at the Mick Lally Theatre from 10pm. Alan McMonagle has published two collections of short stories and contributed stories to journals in Ireland and North America.
Eva Bourke is the author of seven poetry collections and numerous translations including a selection of the German poet Elisabeth Borchers in English, as well as two comprehensive anthologies of Irish poetry in German. Anna Mullarkey is an award-winning composer and performer from Galway, whose music weaves electronics with piano and voice.
The Galway City Library will host a series of readings from 6 to 8pm. Join writers Jimi McDonnell, Aoibheann McCann, Sacha White & Simon Costello for a programme of poetry and fiction. The readings will be followed by a performance of a short play written by Anthony Daly.
Galway Arts Centre at Nuns Island Theatre hosts a very special storytelling event by master storyteller, seanchaí and author Eddie Lenihan from 9pm. Sharing Irish heritage and history for over 50 years, Eddie Lenihan has dedicated his life to collecting Irish oral histories and stories and publishing over 17 books. A national treasure, he has delighted generations of people in Ireland and all over the world with his stories of faeries, (The Good People ) ogres, monsters, banshees, giants, ghosts and much, much more. Expect some spine-tingling scary stories for older children and adults!
Nulala Nolan will present The Women of the 1916 Easter Rising at The Mechanics Institute featuring the stories of the women of the 1916 Easter Rising as told by their relatives and historians. This documentary tells how a cross section of women in society were represented in one of the most famous weeks in Irish history. Their involvement not only had an impact on what happened during Easter week but also what happened afterwards.
Drop by Woodquay for a reading and talk by Margaretta D'Arcy (Member of AOSDANA ), reading her father Joseph D'Arcy's letters from when he was an IRA prisoner in Mountjoy Prison during The Irish Civil War 1922 to his mother. Plus other extracts from her autobiography about him and an historical overview of the Irish Civil War followed by a discussion. With help and support from his grandson Finn Arden.
THEATRE AND FILM
Galway City of Film facilitated by Ardán, and with the support of Galway City Council, will be celebrating Culture Night 2022 on September 23rd with a special public screening in Eyre Square from 8pm to 10pm. This screening will be free and open to the public and will show a programme of short films made as part of Galway City of Film activities over the last two years.
The programme will include films from the short Documentary Scheme, the 48 Hour Challenge, and the Misleór Bursary and will show different examples of the amazing filmmaking going on in Galway City. So, while on your annual Culture night pilgrimage through Galway City, don’t forget to stop by Eyre Square for some unforgettable films out in the open air!
Eva’s Echo Theatre Company will perform a rehearsed reading of a new play Stardom at Palås Cinema at 7pm. This new dark comedy explores the glitzy and disorientating world of reality TV.
CULTURE
Galway Deaf Centre will give an insight into Deaf culture and the Centre itself at the Galway Mechanics Institute through a series of workshops. Each of the three sessions will host a mini Irish sign language classes featuring the ABC in Irish Sign Language as well as an introduction to equipment that Deaf people use to access everyday life.Culture Night coincides with International day of Sign Languages with the theme for the day being ‘Sign Languages unite us!’.
Residents of Galway Cheshire House will join Seamus Gallagher from Kinvara Community Radio to host an evening of informative interviews with inspirational characters from 7pm. It will be a masterclass in Community Radio at its best, with some Galway Cheshire Residents going behind the mic under Seamus’s tutelage. Very interesting guests, knowledgeable in their fields of expertise, will share their gems of wisdom at the Galway Cheshire House, a Residential Centre for persons with a Disability. The Cheshire House Elastic Band, a Community Music band made up of people with Disabilities from the Centre, will perform at the event. The band will be supported at the event by Galway based Folksinger and Songwriter Mick Brown.
GOCOM Culture Café and Radio aims to celebrate the richness of cultural differences, similarities, and uniqueness of their listening audience, through live broadcast of interviews, music and cultural performance, with multicultural cuisines. In collaboration with ARD Family Resource Centre, the Centre will be premiering a short film, 'Our Words, One Voice', directed by Mia Mullarkey from 6pm. The film features voices from Doughiska's multicultural community and features the short film 'Different' which was created following a series 'Spoken Word workshops' with young people facilitated by Kelvin Akpaloo. GOCOM Radio will be interviewing the casts, crew and guests; playing music, bringing in a music Act, and food.
TOURS
Galway City Museum hosts a series of guided tours on Culture Night. Join Brendan McGowan, Education & Outreach Officer, for a guided tour of the Museum’s Revolution in Galway, 1913–1923 exhibition as he shares some of the local stories behind the struggle for Irish independence.
Join Damien Donnellan, Education & Exhibitions Assistant, for a guided tour of the Museum’s Keepers of the Gael exhibition, which explores Gaelic culture and society through the lens of the learned families of historians, lawyers, physicians, poets and musicians who served Gaelic chiefs and English lords in Ireland between 1200 and 1600 AD.
Join Eithne Verling, Director, for a guided tour of the Museum’s MONUMENT exhibition, which – with a primary focus on the stone forts of Aran – investigates some of Europe’s most impressive stone monuments located on some of Europe’s smallest islands. These guided tour events are free of charge but places are limited so advance booking is advisable. Email [email protected] or call (091 ) 532460.
