Last week I got a bit of a shock, as I discovered I was a finalist in 'Arts and Culture' category in the Blog Awards Ireland 2013! There are four other fabulous finalists in the same category, some of them personal favourites including The Irish Aesthete, writing.ie, A Year of Festivals in Ireland and Lexicolatry. Honestly, to be even uttered in the same breath as these fine blogs, is a reward in itself! It has really encouraged to push harder with my blog, so perhaps some changes will be on the horizon in the near future. For now, I'll continue to blog about my cultural pursuits and interests, (on a budget!). You know, I'm happy that even some of my friends read my blog! I have considered doing some freelance writing because theres still a lot I'd like to contribute, but this content doesn't necessarily 'fit' with the blog as it is, but I am unsure as to where to start, so if you have any suggestions feel free to comment or shoot me an email!
Carolanne with her produce at a market in Johannesburg (via)
Two other Sligo bloggers made it to the final round of nominations also, my friend Carolanne of Carol-Anne's Kitchen (for best Blog of the Dispora), and Seomra Ranga (Best Science/Education Blog). Carolanne is a globe trotting foodie, with a passion for life and new experiences. She has lived in India, Australia, and after training at the reknowned Ballymaloe cookery school earlier this year, she is currently based in South Africa, where she brings Irish flavours to the farmers markets of Johannesburg. The girl makes a mean caramel square. I mean I'm craving it right now, thousands of miles away, I've not tasted better yet, and I eat a lot of things coated in chocolate.
(via)
Seomra Ranga (from Irish, translates to 'class room') is an online resource, for Irish primary school teachers, established in 2007 by the enterprising Damien Quinn. It provides a wealth of free resources for teachers to use in the classroom, and Damien is active on every social network there is it seems, tirelessly promoting his fantastic site.
I wish them both well, both are duly dedicated to blogging and promoting their ideals just as well offline!
Blogging was a total revelation for me, I've made new friends along the way, though I'm not sure I can claim that my photography skills have improved! I find it enjoyable and immensely satisfying but I just don't blog enough! The Blog Awards Ireland is a reminder of the talent throughout this small island of ours, and no matter how rural or urban we bloggers are, we can connect with a blogging community on this world-wide platform, whether we're at home, or one of the thousands of Irish abroad, thinking of home.
Tread Softly... A Season of Yeats, is an annual 10 day festival running alongside and complementing the Yeats International Summer School, focusing on the connections between Sligo and Yeats through a programme of music, exhibitions and spoken word performances.
The Tread Softly festival is an initative that seeks to promote Sligo's Yeats legacy as a unique cultural visitor attraction. "The Land of Heart's Desire" has long held appeal for devotees of the poet Yeats, but the story of the Yeats family has its roots in Sligo's rich landscape.
The short video above shows the highlights of last year's first 'Tread Softly' festival. From 2:45 onward you can hear me speak! Last year I gave tours of the John and Jack B. Yeats 'Father and Son' exhibition at The Model gallery. This year I will again be giving a couple of public tours of the current Jack B. Yeats' exhibition 'Enter the Clowns: The Circus as Metaphor'.
Though not a new concept by any means, cultural tourism has gained a lot of mileage in recent years, particularly amongst regional tourism groups striving to make economic gains by utilising their unique local cultural heritage. And who can blame them? Personally, I have seen a vibrant revival in Sligo's arts and culture scene, since I returned a little over a year ago (after being abroad for almost 2 years). Much progress has been made to promote Sligo as a cultural destination, for the benefit of its locals and visitors alike. Cultural tourism also takes place at a local level, with the advent of facebook, many groups promoting local history and encouraging engagement from their members have sprung up. Some recent festivals promoting their area's unique cultural attractions include the Liberties Festival and Happy Days - Enniskillen's International Beckett Festival.
What is Cultural Tourism? Cultural tourism is about understanding the collective cultural offer of a destination, matching that offer to (and connecting with) the 'wraparound' industries (food, drink, hotels, shops and so on) and making sure that it's all packaged in a way that is meaningful to the consumer. (Helen Palmer, 'Why cultural tourism is not a quick fix', The Guardian, April 15 2013)
Recently, in acknowledgement of this, the North-West Craftfest was rebranded as the Lily Lolly Craft Fest. The aim is to commemorate the legacy of the lesser celebrated Yeats sisters, who were pioneering craftswomen in their own right. They were at the forefront of the Irish Arts and Crafts movement, founding the Dun Emer Guild in 1902 with Evelyn Gleeson in Dundrum, Co. Dublin. You can read the article I wrote on the sisters for the Women's Museum of Ireland here.
1. Martina Hamilton, owner and designer at the Cat and the Moon craft boutique and jewellery shop, and curator of the Hamilton Gallery, officially launching the Lily Lolly Craftfest on June 13th.
2. Celebrated academic and expert on the Irish arts and crafts movement, Nicola Gordon-Bowe, delivering a talk on the legacy of the Yeats' sisters, at the Lily Lolly Fest.
The Lily Lolly Craft fest coincided with Yeats Day 2013. Yeats Day is envisioned to be Sligo's version of Bloomsday (June 16th) or Shakespeare's Birthday (April 20th).These are grand shoes to fill. Expectations are hig. The Lily and Lolly festival had the support of local businesses and crafts people. My festival highlights include the Nicola Gordon-Bowe lecture, Una Burke's talk and an embroidery workshop with Amy O'Hara of Dumore Embroidery. These events certainly played close to the Lily and Lolly legacy, by promoting a body of work by by local craftswomen, and the festival was launched with a talk by Nicola Gordon-Bowe, an authority on the Yeats sisters.
My criticism would lie with the marketing of these events, particularly the digital strategy. While the leaflets and poster designs were of particularly high quality. There appeared to very little engagement with Sligo's online community, or the online craft community at large. Una Burke's talk was a total revelation to me, but was so poorly marketed that the attendance for what was an outstanding afternoon was less than it should have been. This lady's career is on the rise, she has designed for Lady Gaga and has exhibited in prominent London galleries! Her inclusion in the event line-up should have been shouted from the rooftops, at least the virtual ones! The failure of the digital strategy to provide a suitable platform for the local businesses that participated meant that some events didn't receive as much attention as they might have done. In this globalised world, cultural organisations cannot afford to ignore the digital sphere when working in cultural tourism.
Looking at organisations finding their soft spot in engaging the cultural and digital sphere ... one of the more unique places I have gone to see a performance, Sligo's Blue Raincoats Theatre company staged a performance of W.B. Yeats' play Purgatory at the summit of Knocknerea mountain, at the base of Queen Maeve's cairn. Incentives like this promote Sligo as a unique cultural destination, a place where magical things happen, such as a contemporary theatre company staging a play by one of the counties famous sons, at the summit of an ancient mountain.
The 'Sligo Who Knew?' campaign turns to social media to unearth the counties hidden gems and to promote Sligo as a 'staycation' destination, being only a 2 and a half hours drive from Dublin. Using the #sligowhoknew hashtag Sligo businesses, cultural centres, selected digital ambassadors, tourists and Sligo tweeters can share the hidden corners of Sligo, from their unique point of view! You can see all the tagged content from all social networks on the #sligowhoknew tagboard. It is probably one of the most forward thinking digital tourism strategies in Ireland at the moment! As a Sligo person, I too play a part in this dialogue, as the press release highlights - "Locals Become Proud Ambassadors of their Homeland".
"… Sligo was a different habitation. A small and beautiful town situated almost at the western edge of Europe, it was bounded by green fields, mountains, and the sea, and its narow streets were lined with small shops. At the quays there were boats loading and unloading, and sailors with stories that made the world seem “full of monsters and marvels”. Over the town to the west loomed the mountain Knocknarea, on its flat top an enormous mound supposed to contain the remains of Queen Maeve; to the north beyond Drumcliff stood Ben Bulben, the long stone outcrop ending in a massive, razor-sharp edge. With its mists and changing colours, its ancient mysterious mounds and dolmens, Sligo was a place where one could easily believe in a world of magic.”
'Prodigal Father: The Life of John Butler Yeats (1839-1922)', William M. Murphy,
(London: Cornell University Press, 1978)
Sligo and its enchanting landscape was a constant source of inspiration for all of the Yeats siblings. Prompted by their father's inability to secure and retain commissions they entered into artistic professions with the intention of earning a living, with the explicit aim of utilising their creative talent into something productive and profitable. These recent festivals promote the Yeats family legacy and seek to place it at the centre of the cultural, historical and physical spirit of Sligo, inspiring a new generation to be inspired by Sligo and its creative traditions; just as the Yeats family once were.
See more:
Cultural Tourism Ireland
Museums connecting cultural tourists: more substance over style, please
Helen Palmer, 'Why cultural tourism is not a quick fix', The Guardian, April 15 2013
‘Sligo – Who Knew?’ Turns To Social Media To Unearth Hidden Gems
Tread Softly ... A Season of Yeats festival
Treading softly in Sligo (Irish Examiner, July 24 2013)
Between one project and another I've been too distracted to resume regular posting. I experience a lot of self doubt with things I intend to post, real things I'd like to write about, and I inevitably end up not sharing them at all. Otherwise, these past few weeks have been pleasant on the whole. I've been enjoying the sun when it shines, and wearing a lot of prints (see above).
Treating myself - Prosecco al fresco at A Casa Mia / Buttermilk ice cream and raspberry sorbet from Murphys Ice Cream / Yuppie tea and chats at the Twisted Pepper
The Bugle Babes at Film Fatale's screening of Notorious / Walking around Clontarf / The interior of my friend's house in Stoneybatter, Dublin
I've been devouring Broderick's treats, made here in Ireland, with some seriously cool, cheeky contemporary packaging / I'm still scouting the charity shops when I have a spare moment, I picked up these two 1970s Carriagaline cups to add to my collection, when I was last in Dublin / I wore my 1950s beaded handbag for the first time, despite having picked it up in a Glasgow charity shop two years ago.
After following it enviously for the past couple of years, and having attended their Sligo screening, I finally made it to a Film Fatale night in the Sugar Club, Dublin! The theme was 1940s, so while I brought a suitable dress in my bulky bag, but it was one of the best evenings of the year (so far! crossing my fingers) so instead I wore my new 1970s cotton dress from Enchanted Vintage. Jean outglamours me in dress, and demeanor, doesn't she look fab? Guess who was shy about getting their photo taken, the expression says it all!
Carol Anne, Sligo girl, globe trotter and food blogger at Carol Anne's Kitchen completed her 10 week course at the world-famous Ballymaloe cookery school in April. Before she returned to South Africa, where she lives with her boyfriend, she hosted two special culinary gatherings in Grange, north county Sligo. I was thrilled to help her out and be a part of her first experience of catering for a large group (25 people). Although it all happened at the last moment, Carol Anne managed to pull off two successful, fully booked supper clubs, over two subsequent Friday nights. She's some woman, for one woman!
All the vegetables were organic, sourced in the Organic Centre, Rossinver, Co. Leitrim.
Menu 1 (May 10th)
Butternut Squash Soup
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Harissa Roasted Chicken
Green Buckwheat Salad
Tzatziki Yogurt Dip
Orange and Fennel Salad
Put lentil stuffed courgettes
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Rhubarb fool with vanilla shortbread
The menu of the first supper club had a mediterranean feel to it. Vegetarians and carnivores were generously catered for. Courgettes are probably one of my favourite vegetables, and in common with most veggies, I adore puy lentils (the caviar of the lentil world). I was able to help myself and scoff some of the food between courses!
Carol Anne's delicious sourdough bread made an appearance on both nights. She picked up the recipe at Ballymaloe, and we were privleged enough to enjoy it with some of her mother's homemade Irish butter, delicately flavoured with paprika and garlic. I was a vegan for a couple of months until I moved back home. Soda bread and Irish butter is manna from heaven, if you're Irish.
Menu 2 (May 17th)
Poppadoms with mint chutney
Vegetable Pakora and mango relish
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Slow cooked spiced lamb korma
Roasted vegetable coconut curry
Both served with lemon rice
Coriander flatbreads and Raita
Carrot and fennel salad
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Cardamon infused panna cotta topped with rosewater infused pomegranate seeds (agar was used instead of gelatin for the vegetarians)
The vegetable curry was divine, much better than I've had in some Indian restaurants. The richness of the coconut milk in the curry really came through, combined with the delicate heat of the spices and the moreishness of the butternut squash, parsnip and sweet potato.
My favourite dish of the two nights was the sublime, cardamon infused yogurt with pomegranate seeds that had been soaked in rosewater. Incredible doesn't cut it! The warmth of the cardamon cuts through the creaminess of the yogurt and your palate was refreshed by the fresh burst of the pomegranate seeds. Quite unlike any dessert I've had in a restaurant before.
The atmosphere was jovial, many of Carol Anne's friends and acquaintances had come for the evening, as well as curious foodies who'd heard about the night on twitter! The evening sunset lent a twinge of romanticism to the evenings as the setting sunlight illuminated the glasses and plates, as people had animated conversations between courses. Benbulben looked curiously like Ayers Rock from the north of Sligo, as the sun set.
Pictures 1 & 3 via @ladydotty & 2 of Carol Anne in her chef's whites via @carolanner
Film-makers David and Sally Shaw-Smith
As a child growing up in the West of Ireland, on the suburbs of a large town, we had the "poverty channels" (how us those of us from outside the Pale would later jokingly refer to a childhood spent watching the basic national TV channels). There were only 2 national television stations, Rte 1 and Network 2, the more obscure TG4 and TV3 were later arrivals in the mid 90s. In the pre-Celtic Tiger years, only the more affluent classmates seemed to have the British channels.
I'm glad my parents refused to budge though, because in the days before our huge, awkward desktop arrived in the early 00s, rainy day television was my only distraction when I'd finished reading all my books. I watched a great many things, my interest in old films and eclectic old documentaries stems from this time (necessity fuels the imagination). By happy coincidence, Hands was one of those iconic documentaries screened repeatedly by RTE over the years, I watched quite a quantity of them, charmed by the almost skill of the craftsman, many who seemed to be kindly old rural bachelors who spoke in indecipherable heavy Cork accents. Now numbering over 37 documentaries focusing on the survival of traditional Irish craft in the Age of the Machine, in all the 32 counties on the island of Ireland.
Hands always stuck with me, especially as I later went on to study History and Art History. The nobility of Ireland's rich arts and craft tradition remained as one of my untapped interests. Happily, Lara Byrne, the film programmer at The Model arts centre in Sligo, arranged for some exclusive screenings of the documentary last weekend, with a Q&A with the directors afterward. The weather was a washout, and unfortunately probably deterred a lot of people from attending, but for those of it who determinedly battled our way through the rain to get there, we were rewarded with an intimate Q&A session with the filmmakers, David and Sally Shaw-Smith.
Lara made her decisions wisely. We were treated to two thirty minute long documentaries, one on Rushwork – In Strokestown, Co. Roscommon, we see the harvesting of rushes on Lough Ree, curing and making traditional rush baskets and other items (1989). The second, 'Of Bees & Bee Skeps' (1983) – winner of the Golden Harp for Ireland and in the museum of Modern Art Collection New York; this arresting and moving documentary records the traditional work of bee-keeping from making a straw skep to catching a swarm, and extracting honey.
(Chairmaker John Surlis, Wool spinning and an Irish tailor, Images via David Shaw-Smith)
I can happily report that after watching these documentaries for the first time in many years on a big screen, the authenticity and intimacy of this series has not dated, even though the fashions have! There are 37 documentaries in all, recorded between 1969 and the late 1980s. I love the easy pace of the documentary, reflecting the pace of life in the countryside in which it was filmed. There were a couple of narrators as far as I remember, but the easy, familiar tone of hs voice still is most comforting. I decided to save up to buy the 15 disk complete Hands series at Christmas, but I did purchase a copy of David's beautifully illustrated compilation Traditional Crafts of Ireland. David and Sally kindly signed it for me, and it is now resting on my beside locker, for me to look through before bed each night!
'Imbued by a sense of urgency to record crafts in their natural surroundings before they disappeared completely, David and his wife Sally, under contract to RTÉ, travelled the length and breadth of Ireland and it’s islands to assemble this important collection of 37 films on traditional Irish crafts and lifestyles, where the emphasis is on the skills of human hands rather than on machines.'
While I would urge people to purchase the DVDs from their official website, while searching Google for images I found a few episodes of 'Hands' available to watch online (and I believe in sharing culture wherever you find it):
1. Rushwork
2. Of Bees & Bee Skeps
3. Currach Makers
4. Chairmaker John Surlis
PS. 'In Good Hands' will be a six-part series revisiting some of the families of craftspeople featured in the original 'Hands' series, I believe it is screening on Rte this Sunday.
The Sligo Flea started out as the Frivolous Fare. I had a rail at the Christmas fare, and fell in love with the vibe. So when I was asked to carry it on, as the original founder was moving away, I leaped at the opportunity! It's been rebranded as the Sligo Flea, and our first flea is on June 22nd.
It was a great day, the sun was shining, the atmosphere was great. I got a little too caught up in it as I got distracted and someone stole one of my vintage dresses. Besides that hiccup there was records, retro bakes, rails of vintage dresses and plenty of banter!
When we'd all packed up, I went for a well deserved glass of wine in Source wine bar with my pal Jenny. The wine bar is on the first floor, and affords a great view down O'Connell street, perfect venue for people watching. When you "go for one", it's never just one ... and so we ambled along on the sunny evening to one of my favourite pubs in Sligo for another.
I wore a 1960s Dollyrockers full length pinafore dress with a plain People Tree cotton tunic underneath. It's not something I'd wear on a typical day, but as I was selling some of my vintage clothing at the fare, I thought I may as well adopt an alter ego. I'm a bit afeared of maxi dresses but I felt the hippie vibes in this.
The Sligo Flea will be on June 22nd, check out our facebook page for all the latest info.
/SligoFleaMarket
@SligoFlea
Thanks to @LadyDotty for taking the pics and giving me permission to share them! The instagram ones are my own.
