History of storytelling to be focus of St Patrick’s Festival

A celebration of traditional and contemporary Irish storytelling will be the focus of this year’s St Patrick’s Festival which will run over five days next month.

There are plans for the festival, first staged in 1996, to expand into a month-long event that would pivot around the week of March 17th, according to its chief executive, Susan Kirby. The proposed changes would include a countrywide celebration and opening and closing ceremonies for the festival.

“We’d have significant ambition in this space and I suppose that’s what you need to have,” she said. “It’s a statement of intent and we intend to have as many conversations as possible. We’ve had really strong feedback from Government around our plans.”

Ms Kirby said the St Patrick’s Festival had carried out an analysis of the potential impact of Brexit on the number of visitors from the UK during future festivals. She said transporting large equipment into Ireland for the duration of the festival could become problematic should the UK leave the EU without a deal.

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Scottish government

The festival is working this year with the Scottish government and British council on the “Words that bind us” cultural exchange between poets in Ireland and Scotland. Ms Kirby said she hoped that kind of project would enable the festival to “continue to forge links with the UK”.

She said this year’s storytelling theme would promote Irish heritage and also offer people a chance to reflect on the spirit of modern Ireland.

Street theatre and pageant companies from Ireland and abroad will present Scéalaíocht agus seanchaí – a celebration of Irish storytelling inspired by long-lost legends and contemporary Irish experiences as part of the festival parade on March 17th.

Organiser say the festival generates some €73 million for the Irish economy and that some 105,000 people visit from abroad during it.