Mary Butler, arts officer with Kilkenny County Council, said it’s an exciting time for the arts in Kilkenny with public participation at an all-time high
Audience reaction to and community participation in two major projects supported under Kilkenny County Council’s Public Arts Programme has been nothing short of “phenomenal” to date, funders of the projects say.
Mary Butler who is the arts officer with Kilkenny County Council said public participation in the arts in Kilkenny is at an all-time high following the success of two public art projects under the banner of the Kilkenny Arts Festival.
The short, cinematic dancer film, Fearghus Ó Conchúir’s All to Play For, which features two camogie and two hurling All Ireland winners premiered to a public audience during the Kilkenny Arts Festival.
While Asylum Productions’ The Alice Project, which was the contemporary reimagining of the story of Dame Alice Kyteler and the Kilkenny Witch Trials of 1324, in five chapters in five different locations across the city, was one of the highlights for many of the entire festival.
Ms Butler said it’s an exciting time for the arts in Kilkenny, and she looks forward to what 2027 will bring for the city and county under the Kilkenny County Council programme for 2024-2027.
“Our approach to public arts in this programme is very much about community engagement,” she said. “We really want the public front and centre. Communities are an integral part of the development of each project. They’re not just audience members at the end of it.
“This is a really lovely way too for the general public to understand the processes around art in general, and it’s not really about that final product — the richness, the magic and the connections happen during that process.”
Ms Butler said it was “incredible” to have about 150 members of the community involved in The Alice Project. Meanwhile, All to Play For celebrated the unlikely pairing of sport with dance and the arts.
“All to Play For engaged with a very different community and was a lovely way to connect dance and the GAA and camogie communities and the physicality of sport and dance, culminating in a gorgeous ten-minute film,” she added.
2027 will see the launch of the final two projects under the Public Arts Programme Kilkenny. Work now continues into next year on Córa, by Michael Gallen, a multidisciplinary project blending choral music, documentary, poetry, design, and animation to craft an evocative film about the heritage of Irish healing practices. It was inspired by Michael’s Opera, The Curing Line.
Meanwhile, Pauline O’ Connell’s project From Hide to Heel also comes to Kilkenny in 2027. It explores and celebrates the intertwined leather and shoemaking traditions in Kilkenny. It tells the story of Padmore and Barnes, the landmark boot factory on the edge of Kilkenny City which provided a much-needed income for many families locally.
“It’s a really important time to tell those stories now,” said Ms Butler. “Because after this generation, those stories are gone.”