Culture

In a Word . . . Ollie

The man who made Galway sexy

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Jul 15 2017 - 00:00

Galway. Lovely Galway. How we still pine! Decades after students days at then UCG (now NUI Galway), and some dalliance in the beloved city thereafter, I, as with others fortunate to spend those life-shaping years there, look back in deepest affection. Bliss was it then to be alive. But to be young was very heaven!

Time it was/And what a time it was, it was/A time of innocence/A time of confidences./ Long ago it must be/I have a photograph/Preserve your memories/ They're all that's left you. (Bookends. Simon and Garfunkel).

Such memory was prompted by a more earthy headline in the Connacht Tribune last month. It read: Man who made Galway 'sexy'. It was about one of the truly great, comparatively unsung cultural heroes of our times – Ollie Jennings.

He was the driving force between those first Galway Arts Festivals and established the template for what is the biggest annual cultural event in Ireland and which made Galway, sexier. (It was always “sexy”!).

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The 40th Galway Arts Festival begins on Monday and it is to be hoped its 41st next year will include a momentous celebration of Ollie’s contribution as “onlie begetter” of it all. Not that he would ever want such a thing. It would just be fair.

There is a photograph of that first 1978 Galway Arts Festival 10-member committee, including Ollie, singer Mary Coughlan, painter Joe Boske, others, and the late Sean Gannon clutching an oversized Snoopy.

Evocative, in black and white shades of its time. Preserve your memories.

That first Festival started high. Participants included author John McGahern, poets Paul Muldoon and John Hewitt, an opening of Bob Quinn's film Poitín, installations from visual artist (and, ahem, Ballaghaderreen-born) James Coleman, puppet theatre from Jay Murphy and Brian Bourke.

Following years saw spectacular theatre from such as Els Comediants, Footsbarn, Druid, and the birth of Macnas with its stunning street theatre/parades. In establishing Macnas, Ollie was assisted by three others – Páraic Breathnach, Tom Conroy and Pete Sammon. Success deserves such fathers!

Well done all but to Ollie the spoils, that modest servant of such tremendous cultural success in Galway and further afield.

Ollie, derived from Oliver, from Old French olivier, for "olive tree". The name of one of Charlemagne's 12 knights and friend of Roland in the medieval Song of Roland. (Cromwell was an aberration!)

inaword@irishtimes.com