Culture Shock: Great festival minds think alike after-hours

Whatever your attitude to alcohol, be it succour or scourge, you have to acknowledge that most arts ideas in Ireland are hatched over conversations in pubs. Accidental introductions, kites that get flown, a “little something that I just wanted to run past you”: these are the seeds that lead to something ending up on our stages, screens or speakers. And one of the best places to plant them is in a festival club.

Festival clubs are the best ill-kept secret of Irish festivals. Most have a late bar or an imaginative interpretation of the licensing laws – the holy grail of an Irish festival.

The most straightforward function of a festival club is discussion; my favourite tip is not to catch a bus home after the show: always leave a little time to discuss what you’ve seen. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s always worth a postmatch analysis with a friend to see what you’ve missed or made.

There is no better place to do this than in a club surrounded by others immersed in the festival experience. So they need to be atmospheric spaces, conducive to a chat, not the back of a bar already packed with Saturday-night punters on the prowl.

For artists and makers, festival clubs have a more powerful resonance. Those starting out in their careers have casual access to more experienced peers, and most arts professionals I’ve met are only too happy to share their experiences. The adage about never meeting your heroes is nonsense; meet as many as you can, but have a good question ready.

For some festivals the club is at the heart of what they do. Galway International Arts Festival takes its club seriously, and it has a permanent home at the Rowing Club. The waterside location certainly helps, with its function room and cosy bar, but the festival also curates the music, making it a proper extension of the programme.

Kilkenny Arts Festival’s club has flitted around the town, from the rickety rooms of the Home Rule Club to the secretive backyard of the Hole in the Wall. This year I was there for the festival’s final Saturday night. The club, in the basement of the Ormonde Hotel, was packed with actors and artists, giddy with relief at the end of the run. It needed this to bring life to a room that’s probably more comfortable with the bustle of a wedding.

The Malta Festival club in Poznan, in Poland, is basically the city square with a temporary roof. During the days it’s packed with events and talks; at night it turns into a silent disco. Kunstenfestivaldesarts, in Brussels, programmes off-the-wall events with specially designed interiors.

Recent Dublin festivals seem to have neglected their clubs. When budgets are tight it’s understandable to be reluctant to spend money on what some might see as little more than another drinking den.

The Dublin Theatre Festival club has mainly been rooted in Odessa. The Fringe club has a more chequered history. It worked well at the Grand Social, was adventurous at the Avenue ballroom, on Parnell Square, and was full of devilment in the Liquor Rooms. This year it’s in the basement of the Church bar, on Mary Street.

The contrast with the festival’s showpiece Spiegeltent couldn’t be greater. On Saturday night the Turning Pirate Mixtape was in residence on Wolfe Tone Square, where the set-up this year is particularly sharp: it’s bang in the heart of town, on the northside (always a bonus), with a food stall and plenty of seating.

But on Saturday night the bowels of the Church bar are the last place you’re going to hatch an artistic enterprise. It’s busy enough with its own regular clientele of drinkers, dancers and Demi Lovato.

Sally Foran is a DJ and broadcaster who has probably played at every major festival in Ireland. “I can ream off the amount of times I’ve witnessed kindred meetings of minds and a physical love and admiration between artists and performers that warms your heart and makes you grateful to be part of something so magical,” she recently posted on Facebook. The festival club needs to be a place, Foran adds, “where everyone wants to be and wants to talk about their shows and their dreams for next year”.

She has a point, but it’s tricky to pull together a good festival club. One idea would be for festivals to highlight ideas that have hatched in their clubs: set up a box where people can drop in their ideas (bonus points if they’re on the back of a napkin) and commission one show or performance the following year on the back of it. (At worst you’ll have some brilliant anecdotes about the worst shows ever conceived at silly o’clock in the morning.)

Spaces don’t have to be new: a reworked familiar home can be just as interesting to discover as a new space. Dublin’s bars have plenty of odd rooms and basements that would love an excuse to tart themselves up.

The benefits of a festival club might not be immediately apparent. But if you can’t build a hotbed for ideas at the heart of a festival, then where is the imagination?