More than 40,000 people attended the six-day Sligo Live Festival where the eclectic programme featured everything from sell-out concerts by Elvis Costello and KT Tunstall, to the World Air Fiddle Championships and a “Y Tunes” competition inspired by the legacy of W B Yeats.
As the festival closed yesterday, producer Rory O’Connor said it had proved to be an out-of-season bonanza for the local economy, generating an estimated €4.5 million.
More than 400 performers participated at 100 events during Sligo Live where a new addition this year was “Under Bare Ben Bulben’s Head”, a spoken word and literary strand, organised in conjunction with locally based and visiting writers and theatre groups.