Liverpool Irish Festival has made it to twenty-one. Symbolically, this is the age when children pick up ‘senior’ status in the family. Customarily, keys were given to mark this birthday.
This marker made us think about anniversary, commemoration and marking time. It’s perhaps not surprising that anniversaries are on our mind this year. We established ourselves in 2003, 20 years ago.
It’s 15-years since Liverpool became European Capital of Culture; 25-years since The Good Friday Agreement and 100-years of the Republic of Ireland.
As well as asking you to celebrate our ‘key-to-the-door’ year with us, we want to celebrate day-to-day memory making
What do we do with day-to-day events? How do we create memories for ourselves that bookmark time, create memories and show people we care?
What are the day-to-day rituals we use to shape our days, keep us healthy and connected, or fuel our minds? How do they build to create, share and highlight life-events?
COVID-19 highlighted how difficult anchoring memory in time can be, so reviewing significant milestones in our lifespan feels apt, as well as us thinking about the smaller, more intimate details of day-to-day life.
One of our #LIF2023 artists, Níamh Grimes, picks up on these very ideas, creating wearable work that hones in on small things we do (or can do) to prepare ourselves for the outside world, protecting us from harm.
A lace-caged coal brooch is a cast bronze piece that takes lace and replaces its fibres with metal. The frame holds a quenched piece of coal, taken from a friend or loved one’s hearth, offering you warmth in the cold. Her body of work deals with the small, talismanic shapes, materials and properties we associate with heritage, women and healing. See Níamh’s work throughout October, In the Window, at Bluecoat Display Centre.
There’s a fuller interview with Níamh here: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/artist-jeweller-niamh-grimes
Also Helping us to mark some of the many anniversaries we have uncovered (see the Festival’s long-read for a deeper-dive in to this: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/anniversary2023) is local artist Pam Sullivan.
Pam has taken the Festival’s Liver Harp symbol and created a series of artworks she will leave in places of Irish influence -across Merseyside- for people to find and keep. Each celebrates a specific anniversary, pertinent to Liverpool, Ireland or both.
In creating this 21st birthday collection, we commemorate moments in history, offering people a keepsake, building new lines of memory and sharing other important anniversaries.
Finders will be asked to register their discoveries, so we can trace where they end up. You can find out more about this programme here: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/events/liver-harp-and-seek
Key moments
This year, as with any year, anniversaries abound. They mark moments of peace and terror, love and hate, silence and noise. They document reconciliation, struggle, searches for justice and societal reform. Key anniversaries we’ remembering include:
- 10-years since The McAleese Report on Ireland’s Church and State Institutional facilities
- 25-years since The Good Friday Agreement, the opening of Liverpool’s new Irish Centre and the installation of the Liverpool Irish Famine Memorial
- 175-years since the seven-year migration caused by An Gorta Mór (the Irish Famine).
As well as visual art, the Festival will run c.40 events across 10-days, spanning theatre, film, tours, talks, workshops and much, much more.
Keeping artists working together -and constantly offering an opportunity to reconsider their practice- is a priority of our Cultural Connectedness Exchange Network (#CCEN) practice day (19 Oct).
This network was set up to assist Irish creatives with representation in Ireland and Britain, linking creatives with commissioners of Irish work. The #CCEN day will feature sessions on
- Making resonant work in communities
- Joy in development
- Curating programmes – themes, morals and missions, and
- Where are we with Irish representation?
As we look through the anniversaries of the last 400+-years, a story about the pursuit for social progression and equity becomes apparent. 2023 marks 190-years since The Slavery Abolition Law; 125-years since Wilde’s The Ballad of Reading Gaol; 50-years since Ireland lifted its Marriage Bar, 20-years since Section 28 was repealed in the UK and 10-years since same-sex marriage was legalised (UK).
25% of people born on the island of Ireland today are mixed-race and 50% of Liverpudlians have Irish lineage (ONS, 2011). So how is Irishness ‘seen’? How do we speak about it and what can be learned by others about interrogating heritage and identity? These are all questions we pose through #CCEN. To find out more visit: www.liverpoolirishfestival.com/engage/ccen
Our Festival is made of stories about Irishness and reveals people searching for -and finding- their identity. We encourage you to join us in the physical and virtual spaces we build, in the hope you can celebrate, reflect and build with us. Our team can’t wait to see you and share time with you. In the meantime, gabh cùram agus fuirich sàbhailte/take care and stay safe!
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Join us during #LIF2023 as we celebrate, commemorate and memorialise ‘anniversary’, laying down memories for future recollections and considering our day-to-day rituals
Words, Emma Smith