*Students playing the banjo. Photograph: John Sheridan.
WILLIE CLANCY week 2025 was the busiest and biggest one yet according to organisers and local businesses.
Glorious weather and fine traditional music brought the crowds to West Clare with Miltown Malbay making the most of its biggest week of the year which turned out to be its most successful.
Proprietor of Michael As Bar in Miltown Malbay, David O’Brien told The Clare Echo he had never seen crowds at Willie Clancy like what was witnessed last week. “It was a brilliant week with massive crowds who all seemed to enjoy themselves. It is a massive economic boost to the town with every business seeing a boost on previous years. The festival is going from strength to strength”.
Held since 1973 in honour of the iconic uileann piper, Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy is always marked in the calendar for most traditional musicians, singers and dancers. The summer school begins on the first Saturday of July and is growing in popularity.
Harry Hughes has been involved as an administrator with Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy for fifty years. “There was a tremendous atmosphere between tutors, students and the general public. There was a huge crowd of general visitors, it all went off very well. The visitors that were going to seaside came to different events like lectures, recitals and concerns. It was very positive, the local business community and people were very happy with it and it was all good humour, the fine weather played a part too”.
He told The Clare Echo, “People are saying it was the biggest summer school yet and that is probably true, we don’t have our full database yet on the exact numbers but it is safe to say it was the biggest one on record for student intake yet. We have to realise there is a consistent interest in Irish traditional music nationwide, that interest is growing and it is very obvious among young people, quite a lot of people around during the summer school, teenagers under fifteen who were there, they come along and they’re all learning music during the spring and they’re ready for the experience at the summer school, some of them are extremely efficient, they highly polished in technique, they know good repertoire and they are ready for what Willie Clancy will throw at them”.
Tyrone Productions’ series of programmes on Willie Clancy week has boosted its profile, he believed. The series was produced by Miltown Malbay woman, Edel Fox.
During the pandemic Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy was online only in 2020 and 2021, its return in 2022 saw numbers “much less” than 2017, 2018 and 2019 in what was “a nervous time” for society and organisers. “We feared COVID had an impact on the numbers but in 2023 it began to increase up to the present large numbers in 2025”.
Success “brings its own problems,” Harry flagged. “That would be in the business of getting venues, capacity for classes, we find ourselves struggling to acquire suitable venues for our classes, it is always a problem and also getting suitable accommodation for tutors and students, we’re going to have to address them in some shape or form to have solutions in place for 2026”.
Speaking at Tuesday’s meeting of the West Clare Municipal Districrt, Cllr Shane Talty (FF) hailed the success of this year’s run in “a major week in Miltown Malbay”. He stated, “Scoil Samhraidh Willie Clancy 2025 is widely seen as the largest and most successful yet, it is a town not on the Wild Atlantic Way, it largely feels it has been underinvested and undercared for over large numbers of years but the sumner school continues to grow, it emerged from COVID and in a new world of Instagram it has continued to grow. It was a huge success. I know the businesses and locals were delighted with the economic impact of it”.
“It was an extraordinarily successful week, we’ve never seen anything like it, it was busy from 2pm on the first Saturday. It was a real success story. it has a new generation encouraged to come and have the experience, it is about maintaining that and keeping it going forward,” said Cllr Michael Shannon (FF).
