Oral heritage collectors, community groups, researchers and heritage professionals will gather at Claregalway Castle on Saturday, October 10, as the County Council continues its ambitious programme to identify, preserve and make accessible an vast recorded heritage across Galway.
The seminar, titled A Century of County Galway Voices: A Shared Responsibility for the Future, follows the completion of the County Galway Oral Heritage Audit, led by the Heritage Office of Galway County Council, which identified 86 collections, more than 4,500 recordings and over 60 collection holders across County Galway and its wider diaspora.
Together, these collections represent an extraordinary archive of County Galway life spanning approximately a century. Recorded voices preserve memories of family and community life, the Irish language, folklore and tradition, farming and fishing, music and song, migration, work, social change, and countless aspects of everyday experience.
The half-day seminar will bring many of those responsible for creating and caring for these collections together to consider a central question: how can Galway ensure that these voices survive and remain accessible to future generations?
Galway County Council’s Heritage Officer Marie Mannion said the audit has demonstrated both the richness of the county of Galway's oral heritage and the importance of planning for its future:
"Across the county of Galway, individuals, community organisations, broadcasters and researchers have spent decades recording the voices and memories of their communities. The audit has allowed us, for the first time, to begin seeing those recordings as part of a much larger county-wide heritage resource. The next challenge is to work collectively to protect that material, support those caring for it and ensure that these voices can continue to be heard into the future."
The seminar will explore the findings of the audit alongside the emerging Galway County Oral Heritage Collections Strategic Plan 2026-2036, which will establish priorities for the coming decade.
Dr Tomás Mac Conmara of Mac Conmara Heritage Consulting, who undertook the audit and strategic planning work with the Heritage Office, Galway County Council, said the project has revealed not simply thousands of recordings, but an irreplaceable record of lived experience.
"Behind the figure of more than 4,500 recordings are thousands of individual voices, people describing lives, places and experiences in their own words and in their own voices. In many cases, those voices belong to generations who are no longer with us. That gives these recordings extraordinary cultural value, but it also creates an urgency around their preservation.
"The audit was about discovering what survives and where it is held," Dr Mac Conmara added. "The strategy is about what happens next. County Galway now has an opportunity to move from identifying individual collections towards a coordinated county-wide approach to preservation, digitisation, access, training and future recording. The seminar is an important part of ensuring that the people who have created and cared for these collections help shape that future."
The programme will include presentations on the findings of the audit and strategic plan, alongside contributions from community collection holders and oral heritage practitioners.
Representatives of local heritage groups and community radio will share their experiences of recording and preserving local voices.
A roundtable discussion, What Next for Galway's Recorded Heritage? will consider priorities including digitisation, training and capacity building, community engagement, future collecting, access and discoverability, and the potential development of a Galway Oral Heritage Network.
The event will also provide an opportunity for collection holders and members of the public to contribute their views to the developing strategic plan.
The seminar is hosted by the Heritage Office, Galway County Council, Galway County Heritage Forum and Mac Conmara Heritage, with funding from The Heritage Council and Galway County Council.
The free event, A Century of County Galway Voices: A Shared Responsibility for the Future, takes place at Claregalway Castle, H91 E9T3 on Saturday, October 10, from 9.30am, concluding with lunch and networking at approximately 1.30pm.
