Macnas characters give their Carnival of Fools characters an airing before this year's parade to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the Galway Arts Festival. Photograph: Joe O'Shaughnessy
Something to get off your chest? Mobile phones, the weather, Macnas, the Euro? Then take up the Galway Arts Festival's invitation to Eyre Square car park later this week, and spill it all out on film.
"Come and give an image of yourself," is how French artist Marylene Negro describes it. This was her invitation to people in Poitiers a year ago, when she persuaded 150 of them to say what they liked for a 133-minute unedited documentary.
All sorts turned up at the chosen venue - again, a multi-storey car park. Some recited poetry, some sang, some railed against paedophilia, some wanted to show off their children. And some said they did not know why they were there at all. The result, Ni vu-ni connu, was a collection of "framed presences", spliced together end to end.
A similar project is being undertaken by the Galway Arts Festival this Friday and Saturday, when Ms Negro will allow the people of the city "total freedom" to do and be whatever they want, in front of a professional crew.
Negro - whose work has ranged from an exhibition of 5,000 slides (which could be seen only through a magnifying glass) to a sound performance of messages left on a telephone answering machine - promises to show the final product during the arts festival. Without any editing, in spite of libel laws. Beware!
Fiendish activities are also afoot down in the fisheries field on Galway's Salmon Weir Bridge, where Macnas prepares its contribution to this 21st festival, which runs July 11th to 26th. It intends to mark the 516th anniversary of Quasimodo's investiture as King of Fools in Paris by despatching a mock Quasimodo to Galway on July 19th to hand on the crown to his successor.
Who might this be? The troupe isn't telling. But it is promising plenty of foolishness, fun and carnival spirit as it releases a bestiary of fantastical animals through the city's streets.
True to its mission statement, it has engaged the participation of several community groups, including Scoil Bride, Shantalla, the Galway School Project, Barna National School, Ballybane For oige, Ballinfoile Foroige, Rice House, Cerebral Palsy Ireland, the Galway Youth Federation and the Youth Action Project.
This community dimension to Macnas's work is often overlooked in all the parade publicity, according to the troupe's press officer, Gary McMahon. It is about to embark on an EU Social Fund Integra programme to train community artists for disadvantaged areas, as one of three arts-based Integra projects in the country.
The "target group" is long-termed unemployed people on the live register, between 16 and 65 in Ballinfoile, Ballybane, Westside and Boher more in Galway. Some 12 participants will be trained over 18 months, but with no guarantee of employment thereafter.
With their certificate in one hand and P45 in the other, they will be "cast out into the new millennium", in Mr McMahon's words, with bundles of skill, experience and talent to offer.
If regeneration is one theme in the project, it reflects to some extent the troupe's own experiences over the last few years. A period of internal trauma has left a second generation of artists, most of whom were not around when Macnas was founded back in 1986.
The stalwarts are older and wiser, with babies rather than dogs in tow as they beaver away in their workshop. The "young Turks", including this year's parade director, Noeleen Kavanagh (24), have "brought some of the lunatic energy back", Gary McMahon notes.
Now preparing to descend on Cork for the Tour de France, the troupe is "comfortable with itself," he says, and still well able to tickle the chin of the establishment.
That it could stage a preview of its parade is a measure of its renewed confidence. And for many people, Macnas is the Galway Arts Festival, because it is the one event that doesn't take credit card bookings - proving fun can still be free.
For details of the Galway Arts Festival programme July 11th- 26th call LoCall 1890 566 577.