National Heritage Week arose out of ‘European Heritage Days’ – an initiative to promote awareness of our built, natural and cultural heritage and to promote Europe’s common cultural heritage. In Ireland, National Heritage Week entails a whole week of heritage-related events.
The Heritage Council co-ordinates the week, with the aim of building awareness and education about our heritage, thereby encouraging its conservation and preservation.
Each year many national and hundreds of local community organisations participate by organising events throughout the country. Many of the events that take place during the week are free, and the programme highlights the abundance of great work that is carried out in all communities in Ireland to preserve and promote our natural, built and cultural heritage.
The Kilkenny Advertiser speaks to Rebecca Reynolds, the project manager and co-ordinator of Heritage Week, about what to expect from the week.
What is National Heritage Week about?
The week is about promoting awareness of our natural, cultural and built heritage. It’s part of European Heritage Days, which started over 20 years ago, and Ireland came on board very quickly.
Most European countries just do the built aspect of it, but in Ireland it was expanded to incorporate other aspects of our rich and diverse heritage. So that’s what it’s about, and henceforth the more events there are the better.
The events book is large at this stage. And 50,000 copies of that are printed and distributed nationwide, and abroad as well.
The Heritage Council has co-ordinated Heritage Week since 2005, and I came along in 2008 – it’s my fourth year to do it. Since 2005, the number of events for Heritage Week has risen from 500 to almost 1400 this year, so it has grown and is very much out there nationally.
What is your role, day to day?
In the run up to the week, it’s mostly about getting communications and the registration process sorted out because for Heritage Week you have over 700 bodies, organisations and individuals taking part in the week as event organisers themselves.
So there is a lot of communications to go out prior to any events being registered, to get those people on board and target specific groups, where maybe we feel there is a gap in the programme, or that we would like to see involved.
For instance, last year we made a concerted effort to communicate more with the craft sector. So it’s that sort of thing, have more traditional skills, more folklore, more cultural events. And to communicate with more arts organisations, so that it leads to more diversification and a more varied programme.
That in itself acts as word of mouth to increase awareness about the week, and also increases involvement in the week. A lot of my time is taking up with co-ordinating communications, interviews, putting together editorial, working with our PR agency.
One of the new things we decided to do this year was a volunteering initiative. So we’re taking in volunteers, and they will all go and promote National Heritage Week in their local tourist office.
We got a lot of people coming back to us about it – the response was very good, 70 or so people came back in a fairly short window, so we’ll definitely do it again next year. It’s the first year that the Heritage Council has taken on volunteers in this way and it’s been very successful.
Is Heritage Week important to Kilkenny as a calendar event, like, for example, the Arts Festival?
Heritage Week is very different to a lot of events, because while it is a national initiative, it is very much community-based, it’s rooted in the community. So a lot of events would be organised by local groups.
While we co-ordinate and communicate it nationally, the organisers themselves have responsibility for communicating it locally.
So whilst we have all of the national institutions and cultural institutions, the OPW, the libraries – both of whom do fantastic programmes for the week – there are also lots of heritage societies, historical societies, and archaeological societies – and anyone really who wants to run an event can do so.
This makes the week quite quirky, and also very personal. It’s nice to have someone coming from the community in your local tourist office, and it adds a sense of authenticity to the tourism experience, which is definitely something that Heritage Week does.
What’s going on in Kilkenny for the week?
Well, storytelling is the theme this year for us, it’s about linking stories to place, so that we don’t forget where we came from.
I suppose in the burgeoning age of technology that we live in, it’s nice to actually go back to basics and remember the value of telling stories with people. Communications are great, but in many ways, they actually disconnect us from each other, increasingly.
So that’s really what it’s about, and connecting us with ‘place’.
We also have some really nice national competitions – a storytelling competition, and a photography competition. And both of them have lovely prizes involved.
For the storytelling, the prize is a getaway in Kinnity Castle which is sponsored by Discover Ireland for the adult group, and the youth group, which is 15-20 a 300 voucher. And the Photography prize is a getaway in an Irish landmark trust property, with vouchers for the younger categories.
We’ve also just launched our iPhone app. We are on Facebook, we are on Twitter. Heritage Week has never been so accessible.
In the past, what has the response been like?
It’s great, really. Last year, we had 370,000 plus people attending events during the week.
Most of it is free, for a start. Most of the event organisers are au fait with running events at this stage.
I would say 90 per cent of what goes on during the week is free. A lot of these events are done for the sheer love of it, it’s people from the community doing it off their own bat.
Sometimes it’s about drawing people’s attention to what is already on their doorstep, that heritage is all around them. For example, an informal talk on Thomastown industrial heritage, run by the Thomastown community river trust, and that one is free.
For whom are the events?
They’re pretty much for everybody. We try and emphasise that the events are family-friendly.
There are a lot of children’s events and we do try an encourage more programming for children. But of course, you don’t want to forget about the die hard heritage fans, who tend to be maybe a little older.
So one of the things we’ve been trying to do is widen the audience for heritage week, and by consequence heritage in general. And that just means making it more accessible to a more younger age group – through things like social networking and the iPhone app and that sort of thing.
And having the competitions, which brings it to a different audience as well.
If you expose children to arts, or heritage and they get that background, and it’s part of their values, they’re likely to come back to it later in life, or develop and interest in it. They’re far more likely to develop an interest if they’re exposed to it than if they’re not. So that’s what it’s about in terms of bringing kids in.
The national institutions in particular are very good at that – the national gallery, and the libraries run lots of children’s events.
How has the economic recession affected the running of Heritage Week?
The budget has been affected, obviously.
But it’s a case of getting more, you know, you just have to prioritise, implement the cuts in a way that doesn’t affect the output for the week – that’s what it’s about.
The recession hasn’t really affected heritage week. In fact, last year, we increased the number of events by 300.
Actually, if anything, I would say it has helped heritage week. People are jumping on board now, because they see it as an opportunity of what they’re doing themselves, of their own initiatives.
The Heritage Council’s budget has obviously been affected, but not in a way that it has affected the running of the programme.
You can download a lot from our website. Event organisers receive support from that point of view, but also we have our national TV campaign, our national radio campaign, and our national press campaign.
So I think that’s why people see the benefit of being involved in it, and people see the benefit of being involved in a nationwide initiative – that it’s bigger than just being local.
So coming up to the week, you’ll be busy – do you get to go to anything?
I’ll try to get to as many things as possible – both in Waterford, where I’m from, as well as Kilkenny.
It just kind of depends on how busy I am and whether I can get out of the office at all. Last year I went to Eanna Ni Lamhna – a nature walk on Tramore beach.
We just got lucky with the day, there were about 80 people on the beach. But that’s it about Heritage Week – you’ve got everything from boat building to theatrical events, to literary events, poetry readings and trad music.
Examples of events (to name but a few ) include medieval fairs, talks on towns, night-time bat walks, wildlife walks and lectures, classical music and poetry recitals, traditional music sessions, storytelling, historical re-enactments, and local history walks and talks and maritime and coastal events.
In addition many heritage sites and stately homes will offer free admission or special concessions.
For more information, or for a comprehensive list of all the events in your area, visit www.heritageweek.ie, or pick up a guide in your local library, tourist office, or heritage place. They are available nationwide.
