Culture Night comes but once a year – and in 2024 the annual celebration of culture, creativity and the arts has masses to offer. Taking place across the country on Friday, September 20th, highlights include puppets shows, cemetery tours and wee-hours raves. You can find out about all the events at culturenight.ie.
Dublin
From Hard Times to Hipster
Duck Lane, beside the chimney of the Old Jameson Distillery, Smithfield, 4-7.30pm
Smithfield and Stoneybatter are today the heartland of Dublin hipsterdom, where you can’t throw a Fontaines DC-branded Bohemian FC jersey without striking a craft-beer bar or speciality-coffee house. It wasn’t always so, as will be revealed on a tour that starts at Duck Lane, beside the old Jameson Distillery, and wends its way to the Glimmerman Pub – named after the “glimmer men” who would patrol Dublin during the second World War to ensure people didn’t use too much fuel.
Shadow Theatre for Children
Goethe-Institut Irland, Merrion Square East, 4.30-6pm
Germany’s Goethe-Institut Irland presents a shadow-puppets play based on The Dream Eater by Michael Ende, the Bavarian author best known for writing The Never Ending Story (which had a second life when the title tune to the Wolfgang Petersen movie featured on Netflix’s Stranger Things). The Dream Eater is set in fantastical Schlummerland, where a kingdom of happy sleepers is suddenly struck down with an epidemic of nightmares. The play will be performed by Claudia Kunkel and Verena Mähler, teachers from the institute’s children’s courses. Afterwards, children are invited to make their own shadow theatre figures, inspired by Ende’s tale.
Seamus Heaney Listen Now Again tour
Westmoreland Street, Temple Bar, 5-9pm
A celebration of the Nobel laureate’s life and career, from his childhood in rural Derry through his international success and his later years in Dublin. The poet’s writing desk is described as “the focal point of an experience that explores Heaney’s creative process through original manuscripts, as well as letters, unpublished works, diary entries, photographs, personal artefacts and multimedia recordings”. The promise is that the exhibition, created under the expert guidance of Prof Geraldine Higgins, director of Irish studies at Emory University, will reveal “the internal and external forces that shaped his work”.
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Birds & Flowers: A Irish-Colombian Dialogue with Nature through Art
Embassy of Colombia, Fitzwilliam Place, 5-9pm
Two cultures collide in an exhibition of works inspired by rural Colombia from the Irish artist Eva Kelly plus watercolours of nature in Dublin from the Colombian artist Dayana Bautista. Their theme is the “the need to live harmoniously with nature in the rural and urban setting”. The artists will be in attendance to discuss how they were inspired by the landscapes of Ireland and Colombia.
Dead Interesting tour
Glasnevin Cemetery, 5-8pm
Glasnevin is more than a cemetery, and on Culture Night the public is invited to participate in the Dead Interesting tour and to learn how a “unique garden cemetery grew from humble origins to become Ireland’s largest and most storied cemetery”. Visit the final resting place of Brendan Behan – and of the first person buried at Glasnevin, Michael Carey, laid to rest in February 1832.
Houses of the Oireachtas tour
Leinster House, Kildare Street, 5-9.30pm
Come for the €336,000 bike shed, stay to see the rest of Leinster House. A guided tour of the Dáil and Seanad chambers will trace the history of the building, designed by Richard Cassels and originally the town house of James FitzGerald, first duke of Leinster.
Seisiún Palaistíneach
Wood Quay Amphitheatre, 6.30-7.15pm
This is a trad session with a difference, combining Irish jigs and reels with the Palestinian rhythms of darbuka drums and mawwal singing. Featuring the Palestinian artists Abdullah Al Bayyari, Leen Maarouf and Latif Midoume with Fergus Cahillane, Róisín Ward Morrow, Ben Strong and Richard Breen of the Irish group Faró, the evening will also offer a chance to learn the dabke, the traditional dance of Palestine.
Ambient Orbit
Museum Building, Trinity College, 9.30-11.30pm
Described as a “calm oasis within Culture Night”, Ambient Orbit, which is in run partnership with the Douglas Hyde Gallery at TCD, mixes field recordings, electronic music and live performances from Rachael Lavelle and Ryan Hargadon. The event will be broadcast live on RTÉ Lyric FM between 10pm and 11.30pm.
City Sounds
Various venues, 9pm-midnight
Celebrating Ireland’s soundystem culture, this event divides itself between Central Plaza (ie the paved area outside the old Central Bank of Ireland, featuring Rise Up Sound System with t-woc, Jwy and Jonezy), Essex Street (Bang Bike Collective with Dimebag DJs and JBR Project featuring Pinsleep) and Capel Street (Interruption with Lyndz B2B GVX, Scidley Rott and David Oblivion).
Nocturnal Beats: Late Venue Trail
Various venues, 9pm-3am
The capital’s nightlife is celebrated in a late-hours trail taking in venues such as Index, Tengu, Hen’s Teeth and WigWam.
Cork
51 Removals
City Hall, Millennium Hall, 4.30pm and 6.30pm
Elisa Gallo Rosso has moved 51 times in her life, from Italy to Egypt via Mexico and the UK. Today the interdisciplinary artist lives in Ireland; tonight she will investigate the concepts of leave-taking and arrival, exploration and belonging in a theatre show in which “everyday objects come to life ... creating a playful and absurd world”.
Backwater Artists Group exhibition and tours
Wandesford Quay, 5-7.30pm
Backwater Artists Group opens its doors and invites the public to explore exhibitions such as Baile na mBocht, by Andrea Newman, and Transitus, an exhibition by Backwater Artists Network members Éadaoin Glynn, Oonagh Hurley and Mary Bowen Galvin. Artists will be on hand to talk about their work.
Songs from a Lost Paradise exhibition, talk and tour
Laneway Gallery, 5-9pm
The Centre for Creative Practices presents Songs from a Lost Paradise, a collaborative exhibition by the Pakistani-born artist Amna Walayat and the Irish artist Tina Whelan. Songs from a Lost Paradise is described as an “artistic journey that bridges diverse cultural narratives on womanhood”. The exhibition features traditional Indo-Persian miniature paintings and intricate installations in addition to “womb artwork” inspired by ancient symbology.
Cork Light Orchestra
City Gaol, 5.30-7pm
The amateur and semi-professional members of Cork Light Orchestra perform against the evocative backdrop of Cork City Gaol, in Sunday’s Well. They will play music inspired by the salon jazz and light orchestras of the 1920s and 1930s.
Immersive Experimental Sound Experience
Cork Opera House, 11pm-1am
A Culture Night commission from east Cork composer Kevin Terry, this exhibition features acoustic “sound worlds” created specially for individual rooms in the opera house. The promise is that the sounds will “interact with the architectural nuances, creating an experience where every pulse and murmur is something that has been hanging in the air since the building’s construction”.
Limerick
Teach – House
Dooradoyle Branch Library, Dooradoyle, 5pm – 6pm
The bilingual poet Emer OʼFlaherty explores memories of childhood and belonging over the course of a lifetime in her work Teach–House. The pieces, in both Irish and English, will be performed by the spoken-word artist Joanne Callinan.
Galway
In Search of Hy-Brasil
15 Market Street, 6-8.30pm
A presentation of the artwork In Search of Hy-Brasil – Ireland’s national pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2023. Created by architects Peter Carroll, Peter Cody, Elizabeth Hatz, Mary Laheen and Joseph Mackey, the pavilion “derives from an intense engagement with the islands of Ireland and is a direct provocation to all of us to reimagine the vast combined territory of land and ocean we call our home”.
Drogheda
Poems, Bells and Synths
Augustinian Church, Shop Street, 7.30-9.30pm
Drogheda’s Augustinian Church has a unique “bell tree” of 40 chimes used for rituals and Masses. For Culture Night, the public is invited to enjoy a new work, Sounds from a Cloister, that marks 800 years of the Dominican Order in Drogheda. The organisers promise to integrate into the composition “the sounds of the other church bells of Drogheda” and to “surround the audience with retro synthesiser sounds, percussion and bells”.
Naas
Alert: Creative technology demonstration
Merits, Devoy Quarter, 5-7pm
Some of the most “innovative creative technology companies” in Co Kildare will participate in an exhibition that includes virtual reality, augmented reality, AI, short film and VFX. Attendees are invited to “learn how armies are built in Hollywood, see the future of shopping in the metaverse” and speak to award-winning animators.
Killarney
Cultúr and Cumadóirí
Black Sheep, New Street, 6-10.30pm
A workshop on “finding creative inspiration in nature” will be hosted by Kerry Walker of the Nature Hub, who hosts health and wellness practices to alleviate stress, including “forest bathing”. There will also be a performance by the songwriter and poet Amano Miura.
