45ème Arts Festival à Clifden

Du 15 au 25 septembre 

 C'est à  Brendan Flynn que l'on doit ce bonheur annuel . Ici avec la pianiste et chanteuse Carmel Dempsey,, un des piliers du festival . 

Clifden Arts's festival is the longest running community arts festival in Ireland

Community Arts Week began life as a week-long celebration of the arts for the children of Clifden Community School – helping to develop artistic and social skills, and provide an outlet for self-expression and development. Over the years Arts Week at the school gave such pleasure to the greater community that an encompassing and fervent support network grew around it, allowing it to develop.

Audiences can expect a very high quality artistic programme with a superb literary, musical and visual art content which again will have the community arts of Clifden and the surrounding hinterland as a central focus with creative writing, music, theatre and film workshops and performances taking place in the local schools for the duration of the festival. Clifden Arts Festival opens on with a special segment for secondary school students.

'It's important we have a space to rest, and think and be inspired'

Former schoolmaster Brendan Flynn has been the creative drive behind the Clifden Arts Festival for 42 years. He tells Hilary A White he sees himself as a 'messenger boy', and about the joy he gets from seeing children react to artists

In 1974, the road from Galway to Clifden wouldn't have been as broad and accommodating as it is today. Even now, as you make the journey out west to a point beyond, you twist and undulate with mountain walls to your right and endless boggy lakelands to your left. 

It's almost 45 years to the day since a worldly young teacher named Brendan Flynn made that long pilgrimage to take up a job as vice principal in the Franciscan monastery just outside the town. The Ballinasloe native had returned from five years in Spain where he'd been teaching English in the University of Valladolid and sating his cultural appetites. Before that, he had taught in pre-Troubles Belfast and befriended Seamus Heaney. And before that again, Flynn was stationed in Nigeria, a journey that, in the 1960s, must have made Galway to Clifden seem like a doddle.

Event linchpin: Brendan Flynn still gets great enjoyment from the Clifden Arts Festival. Photo by Andrew Downes

Hilary A White

September 14 2019 02:30 AM

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In 1974, the road from Galway to Clifden wouldn't have been as broad and accommodating as it is today. Even now, as you make the journey out west to a point beyond, you twist and undulate with mountain walls to your right and endless boggy lakelands to your left. 

It's almost 45 years to the day since a worldly young teacher named Brendan Flynn made that long pilgrimage to take up a job as vice principal in the Franciscan monastery just outside the town. The Ballinasloe native had returned from five years in Spain where he'd been teaching English in the University of Valladolid and sating his cultural appetites. Before that, he had taught in pre-Troubles Belfast and befriended Seamus Heaney. And before that again, Flynn was stationed in Nigeria, a journey that, in the 1960s, must have made Galway to Clifden seem like a doddle.

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In 1974, the road from Galway to Clifden wouldn't have been as broad and accommodating as it is today. Even now, as you make the journey out west to a point beyond, you twist and undulate with mountain walls to your right and endless boggy lakelands to your left. 

It's almost 45 years to the day since a worldly young teacher named Brendan Flynn made that long pilgrimage to take up a job as vice principal in the Franciscan monastery just outside the town. The Ballinasloe native had returned from five years in Spain where he'd been teaching English in the University of Valladolid and sating his cultural appetites. Before that, he had taught in pre-Troubles Belfast and befriended Seamus Heaney. And before that again, Flynn was stationed in Nigeria, a journey that, in the 1960s, must have made Galway to Clifden seem like a doddle.