Easter 1916: Global programme for centenary announced

A three-month programme celebrating links between Argentina and Ireland, along with an exhibition and seminar on Roger Casement in Brazil, have been announced for next year's international Easter Rising commemoration programme.

The Ireland 2016: Global and Diaspora Programme features activities across the world.

Some 750,000 Argentinians claim Irish origin, the biggest diaspora outside the English-speaking world. The programme for Buenos Aires will focus on the relationship between Ireland and Argentina.

An exhibition and seminar on the life and work of Casement will be held in Brasilia and in the Amazon region, where Casement worked to highlight the abuse suffered by the Putumayo Indians during the early 20th-century rubber boom.

A digitisation project in Melbourne will help track reporting of the Easter Rising in the Australian press, where it exacerbated sectarian tensions between the country's Catholics and Protestants. Sydney will play host to a production of Wherever Green Is Worn, a musical about the Rising.

US festival

Tokyo will host a conference on Asian perspective's of the 1916 Rising. Abu Dhabi will host a production of Sean O'Casey's Shadow of a Gunman .

In the US, the big events will be a three-week festival of Irish arts and culture in the John F Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington DC and a community commemorative event in Pier A in New York City.

A conference on Ireland in 1916 and Finland in 1917 (the year it won independence from Russia) is set for Helsinki.

Announcing the programme, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade Charlie Flanagan said the Easter Rising was an international event that made the front page of the New York Times for days after it occurred.

“It is fitting that the commemoration will reach beyond our shores and bring Ireland’s story to a whole new audience in a new way,” he said.