Search Results for 'Mechanics Institute'

One night for all — as city marks culture night

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.

This very stylised plan of Galway was made in 1583 by Barnaby Googe and is the earliest surviving map of the city. It shows the walled town as it stood at the end of the medieval period. Galway was packed with houses: the D-shaped circuit of walls with mural towers and gates was complete; there was only one bridge over the fast flowing river, which was also an important salmon fishery, and it possessed a wharf or landing place for ships. The parish church of St Nicholas and the central market place with its market cross were prominent in the townscape, which was structured around the northeast/southwest axis of Shop Street branching into Main Guard Street and High Street/Quay Street.

IT IS that time of year again when one can ‘caper nimbly to the lascivious pleasing of a lute’, to paraphrase Shakespeare, as Galway Early Music Festival brings us a feast of medieval melody over the coming weekend May 24 to 26.

This very stylised plan of Galway was made in 1583 by Barnaby Googe and is the earliest surviving map of the city. It shows the walled town as it stood at the end of the medieval period. Galway was packed with houses: the D-shaped circuit of walls with mural towers and gates was complete; there was only one bridge over the fast flowing river, which was also an important salmon fishery, and it possessed a wharf or landing place for ships. The parish church of St Nicholas and the central market place with its market cross were prominent in the townscape, which was structured around the northeast/southwest axis of Shop Street branching into Main Guard Street and High Street/Quay Street.

Mechanics’ institutes originated in Scotland in the 1820s. In 1826 a committee formed the first such institute in Galway when it set out a library and newspaper reading room in the ballroom of the Corn Exchange in Eyre Square. Its primary aim was educational and it had rules prohibiting discussion of politics and religion. Difficulties arose when some of the patrons of the facility presumed they could tell the members how to vote in an election and so the institute collapsed.

SYNTONIC STATE is the title of the 16th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Art which opens tomorrow, Friday November 2, and continues to November 18, featuring work by more than 20 artists.

Many people feel 2016 was a year without any real summer weather, but 200 years ago Galwegians faced far worse weather, one that resulted in rioting, protests, blockades, and food shortages.

Last weekend, newspapers carried headlines about a 14-year-old Afghan boy, Raheemullah Oryakhel. He was killed in a hit and run after being tossed from a lorry in Calais which he had been trying to board in an attempt to get to Britain. The boy had family in the UK, and was entitled to move there, but he had despaired of the endless bureaucratic delays with his application, delays which, he felt, seemed deliberate.

THIS YEAR'S Galway Fringe Festival visual arts programme features a special exhibition of 'rural pop art' by the celebrated Breton collective Hangar’t. The group hails from the village of Nizon, near Pont-Aven southern Brittany, an area which greatly inspired the work of Paul Gauguin.