Search Results for 'Nuns Island'

An online public meeting on the State's housing crisis will take place next week, with speakers from the National Homeless and Housing Coalition and An Taisce.

IT IS, as Stephen Fry noted at the outset of the Covid-19 pandemic, “a very dark time for the performing arts”, and just as venues re-opened and shows were taking place once more - albeit on a small scale - Galway stands on the brink of a county wide lockdown.

Investment and not just policing is needed in communities

It is that time of the year again when children go back to school. It will be different this year as most of them will be delighted to return to classes and meet their friends after such a long break. For older generations, this time of year was, in the words of the Bard, more akin to "creeping like snail unwillingly to school”. And yet, when we look back on our schooldays, it is usually with affection. The old cliché ‘the best years of our lives’ still applies. It was where were educated, matured, learned and developed skills, remembered quotations like the above from the Bard, and made friends for life.

Galway and the west of Ireland have become a hotbed for entrepreneurial activity in recent years. In fact, you may not know it but the word “entrepreneur” was coined by an Irishman from the Wild Atlantic Way. Richard Cantillon, born in the coastal town of Ballyheigue, County Kerry, came up with the first known definition of an entrepreneur in the business sense in his French book “Essai”. He defined entrepreneurs as “non-fixed income earners who pay known costs of production but earn uncertain incomes, due to the speculative nature of pandering to an unknown demand for their product”. Would you believe that Cantillon’s definition is from 1730, nearly three hundred years ago? It could have been written just yesterday.

Tomorrow evening, Friday, November 1, sees the launch of the 17th TULCA Festival of Visual Arts at the Festival Gallery in William Street, formerly An Post’s sorting office.

RED BIRD Youth Collective, the visual arts group for 15 to 24 year olds, is seeking new members for its latest project - creating a body of work with Galway artist Marielle MacLeman, using Nuns Island as a starting point.

Samaritans Ireland is urging Galwegians to get involved with the charity, give something back to the local community, and make a difference to people’s lives.

I have a secret fetish for architecture (just not so secret any more). I have been known to fondle bridges; to lose my breath over mindblowing overhangs; to stare at the steel ceilings of stadiums rather than the pitch and wonder just what allows 50,000 people to hop up and down without it all collapsing.

The original purpose of the structure that is the Salmon Weir Bridge was to connect the new County Courthouse with the County Gaol on Nuns Island. Urban folklore has it that they built a tunnel under the river at the time in order to transfer prisoners from one building to the other, but why would they construct a crossing over and under the water at the same time? It does not make sense. The building of the seven span bridge started in 1818 and finished in 1819.