How Paddy's day became a humdinger

Only the Pope drew crowds bigger than those at the centrepiece St Patrick's Day parade in Dublin last Tuesday. Four years ago, we couldn't have believed it possible. Ireland's national celebrations focused on one day only - March 17th - and relied on parades throughout the country which ranged from tedious-but-worthy to absolutely naff.

People made the best of it but at bottom, the national celebrations were a damp squib, as much a sign that new Ireland was unsure about what or how to celebrate, as a mark of professional inadequacies in mounting largescale public events.

All changed. A professional team led by executive director Marie-Claire Sweeney and festival director Rupert Murray started with the 1995 parade under chairman Michael Colgan, working to a five-year plan whose object was nothing less than total transformation.

"The old parade was a yellowpack event, about as colourful as a cheap knicker counter in Bangkok," says Colgan. "That had to change. We decided not to put all our eggs in one basket by sticking only with a parade, but to make it a people event by staging lots of different spectacles so everyone would find a way to celebrate that suits them. We've demilitarised it - reviewing stands are now viewing stands - and we've insisted that the Grand Marshal be a hero to the young. That means no politicians."

Two years ahead of schedule, audience and marketing targets have already been achieved and people are voting with their feet. Like Ireland itself, the celebrations have been completely reinvented: the spectacular combina tion of street theatre and public entertainment makes the festival a model for Ireland's millennium events.

"We use two words all the time: inclusive and accessible," says Sweeney. "We try to involve as many sectors of society as possible and keep everything free. As a matter of policy, we have no paid events."

What makes the festival real is the huge involvement of existing community groups working all over the country. Hundreds of schoolchildren, parents, street theatre workers, artists, designers and engineers spend months in preparation. Anticipation and a sense of expectancy builds - people can feel that they own this festival, which is Sweeney's guiding instinct.

What makes that energy count is an insistence on professionalism. Sweeney and Murray match the groups to top practitioners in street theatre and community art, giving amateur involvement a classiness and sense of achievement which does as much for children's self-esteem - and that of their communities - as it gives audiences pleasure.

Nothing is tacky. Communities row in by matching professionals with a commitment and performance level they can only respect, putting the lie to the sometimes negative images of the areas from which they are drawn. Everyone wants to get things right and the lesson learned is that given appropriate resources with carefully brokered expertise, communities can achieve anything.

This year's matching of legendary Catalan theatre company Els Comediants with four separate Dublin communities - Ballymun, Priorswood, City Quay and Rialto - gave the festival a stunning Patrick's eve spectacular, called Oiche, the Bailey's night parade. It's a good example of the festival's strengths.

Like all its plans, the event builds on existing relationships forged over many years in places like Galway, Dublin and Catalonia. Co-ordinated by Paraic Breathnach of Galway's Macnas, with long-time cultural activist Niall O Baoill working as liaison officer, culture in the community never seemed stronger.

Colgan attributes such positive outcomes to letting the professionals do the planning. "The festival team is a resource now," he decides.

"That resource should be available to the people of Ireland for all sorts of events - tall ships, homecoming athletes, the return of the football team, even if they haven't won, all the celebrations we often want to have but can't pull off. What we need to set up is a year-round squad instead of an ad-hoc grouping."

The festival started with a bang on Saturday, launched by the Aer Lingus Symphony of Fire, a jaw-dropping firework extravaganza staged at the Custom House. Each day, small street theatre events - jugglers, magicians, mime artists - underpinned at least one big number. On Sunday, that presented Dublin's public with the carni valesque Masquerade 2000, long associated with the great Notting Hill pageants in London.

Monday's centrepiece was Oiche, with Tuesday, St Patrick's Day, offering the new-style parade, an event which made Dublin's streets come alive as rarely before. Families found themselves taking routes through areas of the city they had never seen. Cars were outlawed: the St Patrick's Festival meant making the city a place where people came first.

Thirty-four acts took part. One measure of how far the parade has developed was that traditional contributions by US marching bands and police forces looked far more old-style than local talent. What made it work?

"You can get a great party out of the people of Ireland - it's that simple. Administratively it doesn't come down to one single ingredient," says Murray. "People took to the whole idea behind the festival, which is for everybody to get out there and have themselves some fun. The scale worked well on Dublin's streets."

Dublin is not a ceremonial city - its narrow streets creak under the weight of large-scale public events. Some sites had viewing and Colgan noticed the squash at certain junctures: that is now up for review.

ALL THE same, barriers weren't necessary at many of the smaller street theatre events. "People behaved very courteously to performers and gave them lots of space," Murray observes. "What I've learned is that we've got to be particularly careful about where we stage things."

He's interested in developing more night-time events. As a top lighting designer who created the light for Riverdance as well as for many Gate Theatre events, he loves the innate theatricality that comes with making the whole city a stage. More aerial events within the parade could also improve the viewing scale.

Sweeney is now drawing up the review agenda. "The festival has hit a higher plane much sooner than we thought. What we have to ask is how much further we can take it." What seems clear is that the festival's success is down to three factors: imagination, professionalism and strategic planning. Money helps - budgets are still tight, with this year's festival operating on a budget of £850,000.

Success, however, works like a self-fulfilling prophecy. New sponsors are lining up, eager to establish brand recognition associations with the festival. Colgan's board already includes financial networkers like Tom Rea, chief executive of Clery's, Ray Bates of the National Lottery, Chris Britton of Bailey's, Noel Toolan of Iona Technologies and David Blake-Knox of RTE.

On St Patrick's Day, the Minister for Tourism, Dr McDaid, identified the festival as the template for Ireland's millennium celebrations and allocated £500,000 to be spent on plans within the current year. His assistant, Bart Cronin, stresses the need to extend "the colour and panache" seen in Dublin this week to other centres all over the country. "Dr McDaid talked to Michael Colgan, his team and the festival committee and has decided to set up a new company to co-ordinate Ireland's millennium celebrations using that model," says Cronin. "Within the next few weeks, we will be publicly advertising an invitation to all festivals around Ireland to submit ideas within our overall model for what we hope will mark Ireland's millennium celebrations."

Colgan expands the philosophy. "We can't compete financially with huge events like London's Dome, so we want to steal a march on everywhere else by getting in first and doing it with style."

The 1999 St Patrick's Festival will kick-start a rolling celebration which leaps across towns and counties, building on already-established events and using this resource to make them better than ever: sharing staff, costumes, designers; booking big international companies for millennium tours.

It could include festivals like the Rose of Tralee, Mary of Dunloe, Cork's jazz, Waterford's light opera, Wexford's opera, the ploughing championships - the possibilities are endless. Each place gets to keep its own vernacular flavour but does what it's good at with an even greater amount of style - and attitude.

What about the rain? Colgan's hotline to heaven may keep us all dry. He advised an American nun to talk to God as follows: "Just say to God, `If I were you, I'd take some friendly advice - keep the rain away'."