*Artist Lynn Kirkham’s angel wings.
Anticipation is swirling around Mountshannon air as a special merger between the Trad Festival and the Arts Festival comes to fruition next weekend.
Regeneration is the theme of the two mini-festivals which take place as part of the Mountshannon Arts Festival in East Clare that sees the Aistear Park serve as centre stage hosting an open air market.
With one event already completed since June, the second is scheduled to run from September 24th to 26th which had been a staple part of the calendar for the Mountshannon Trad Festival running from 2010 to 2019 while this 2021 marks the 25th year of the Arts Festival.
Funding secured under the Live Outdoor Local Performance Scheme from Clare County Council by Cliodhna Donnellan who was co-ordinator of the Trad Festival has allowed the creation of the collaboration.
Over the past eighteen months, she has presented The Morning Dew on Scariff Bay which give traditional musicians a platform during a difficult time for the arts. “The climate has been so volatile for our sector over the past eighteen months so it’s impossible to know what next year will bring but it does open the opportunity to look beyond what we just see, there are other ways of working and ways of existing and supporting each other in a very small community so that all artists can benefit, this emerged organically through a very constrained situation,” the Mountshannon musician stated.
Of her aspirations for the upcoming events, Mel shared, “It is about bringing people together, we have the galleries, the pop-up shops, people spend money and a percentage of that goes back into the event. I created a poster for the Festival this year, because it is the twenty fifth one I wanted it to sell, I used all creatures that regenerate, that will be available online and in the pop-up shops. It is something missing, Mountshannon Arts don’t have their own merchandise, it will be nice to bring that in and include it in the interpretative centre”.
For a full schedule of all the events, visit https://www.mountshannonarts.ie/