CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE The latest of the 20 schemes in the Credit Union Residencies programme for Cork 2005 to be completed will be unveiled on Saturday next: the tiles, produced by local groups - schoolchildren, pensioners, priests - working with sculptor Julie Forrester in the Glen Community Development project, will be shown mounted on a concrete installation at the Glen.
Although partly colonised by local authority building schemes, the north-side Glen is still a place of whispering trees, rugged paths and winding streams, and will be the site, also on Saturday, of another community scheme, in which older residents will monitor nostalgic demonstrations of "Games of the Past".
RECORD BREAKERS Lord Mayor Cllr Deirdre Clune, having already opened the Heritage Day programme for Cork City Council, seemed tireless on Saturday when she led the record-breaking dancing bid at the Céilí Mór on the Grand Parade. This city council enterprise was largely funded by a €150,000 donation from property developer Kieran Coughlan, who is building on the tree-lined grounds of the former Ursuline Convent in Blackrock. Managed by Dr Martin Barrett and the Triskel Arts Centre, The Siege of Ennis had 8,371 people swinging the full length of the South Mall and half of the Grand Parade. Seven live bands kept both mood and tempo up-beat, and the sight of Michael Flatley, validating the count-down with Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin and playing the flute along with the Kilfenora Céilí Band, raised the sense of a grand public and community occasion even higher.
HERITAGE CENTRE Roanoke Island Historical Association plays a major part in this year's Heritage Festival in Youghal, Co Cork, which opens on Friday and concentrates on the life and times of Sir Walter Raleigh in a programme of lectures, concerts and exhibitions, with several stage performances from the Roanoke players throughout the 10-day event (024-20170).
ON A CLASSICAL NOTE Back in Cork, the city library is the venue for the launch of Ruth Fleischmann's new book, Classical Notes: Composers of 19th and 20th-century Cork, tomorrow at 6.30pm.
