Category Archives: Arts

McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition 2018

Arts, Cork City Events, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized, Ward Events

 

    Cork’s young people are invited to participate in the tenth year of Cllr Kieran McCarthy’s Community Talent Competition. The auditions will take place on Sunday 22 April 2018 between 10am-4pm in the Lifetime Lab at the Old Cork Waterworks Lee Road, Cork City. There are no entry fees and all talents are valid for consideration. The final will be held on Sunday 6 May. There are two categories, one for primary school children and one for secondary school students. Individuals or groups can enter. Winners will be awarded a perpetual trophy and prize money of €150 (two by €150). The project is being organised and funded by Cllr Kieran McCarthy in association with Red Sandstone Varied Productions (RSVP).

Cllr McCarthy noted: “The talent competition is a community initiative. It encourages all young people to develop their talents and creative skills, to push forward with their lives and to embrace their community positively”.

Continuing Cllr McCarthy highlighted the strengths of the project; “Over the ten years of the project, many auditionees have passed through our doors – singing, acting and performing; we have tried to give young people pointers in developing their talents further; social inclusion is important to me; many are just taking the first step and many have carried on developing and enjoying their talent through local stage and performance schools; My team and I are very proud as well that several of our auditionees are now professional musicians, singers and even magicians with young careers burgeoning”. Further enquiries/ details on the Community Talent Competition can be acquired from the talent show producer (RSVP), Yvonne Coughlan at rsvpireland@gmail.com.

Cork Lifelong Learning Festival 2018

Arts, Cork City Events, Cork History, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Uncategorized, Ward Events

    The eagerly awaited 15th Cork Lifelong Learning Festival will take place from Monday 19 – Sunday 25 of March 2018. The annual festival has grown year on year since 2004 and lives by its motto of ‘Investigate, Participate, Celebrate’, with the public encouraged to do just that by trying out new experiences, participating in events and enjoying demonstrations of skills both new and old.

    A week of hundreds of free events are aimed at all ages, from the very young to the young at heart, and all Lifelong Learning Festival events are open to all. The exciting programme includes performances, poetry, workshops, walks, displays and demonstrations, and really does have something for everyone. The only limit is your appetite to try something new. Some events can be in high demand so check the programme to see if you need to book.

    Events, which aim to be accessible to all, take place right across Cork city, and into the county, in a variety of venues indoors and out, including shopping centres, libraries, museums, community and resource centres, parks, colleges, private businesses and on the streets.

    Newly appointed Festival Organiser Siubhán Mc Carthy says: “Cork loves learning and to prove it we have a packed programme of free, accessible events open to all, regardless of your learning abilities or ambitions; I guarantee you’ll find something during festival week that you want to know more about. Learning is not just about gaining qualifications, it’s also about making life more fulfilling and enjoyable and I passionately believe in the power of knowledge to change lives for the better”.

   This year’s festival includes four free seminars covering subjects as diverse as social inclusion to entrepreneurship and six ‘Learning Factory’ events across the week, in conjunction with CIT, which give an insider’s look at some of Cork’s most innovative businesses – including a guided tour of Inniscarra Dam. All events are hosted by volunteers be they individuals, community organisations, private businesses, schools or colleges.

     The festival is a key part of the City’s strategy of making Cork a Learning City. Its success was recognised by UNESCO when Cork was one of the first 12 cities in the world to receive a Learning City Award in 2015 and Cork recently hosted UNESCO’s 3rd International Conference of Learning Cities in September 2017.

The free printed festival programme is out now and available in libraries, City Hall, the Tourist Office on Grand Parade, or from host venues

See the programme online at www.corklearningcity/lifelonglearningfestival

Evening Echo, Art Installation, Shalom Park, December 2017

Arts, Cork City Events, Cork History, Improve Your Life, Kieran's Council Work, Landscapes, S.E. Ward Local History, Uncategorized, Ward Events

Evening Echo Art Installation by Maddie Leach, Shalom Park, Cork, 19 December 2017

Evening Echo by Maddie Leach, 19 December 2017:

    Evening Echo is sited on old gasometer land gifted by Cork Gas Company to Cork City Council in the late 1980s, and subsequently dedicated as Shalom Park in 1989. The park sits in the centre of an old Cork neighbourhood known locally as ‘Jewtown.’ This neighbourhood is also home to the National Sculpture Factory. Not a specific commission, nor working to a curatorial brief, Evening Echo is a project generated as an artist’s response to the particularities of a place and has quietly gathered support from Cork Hebrew Congregation, Cork City Council, Bord Gáis and a local Cork newspaper, the Evening Echo.

    References to the slow subsidence of the Jewish community in Cork have been present for years, but there is now a palpable sense of disappearance. Within the Cork Hebrew Congregation there are practical preparations underway for this, as yet unknown, future moment of cessation. Evening Echo moves through a series of thoughts and questions about what it might mean to be at this kind of cusp, both for the Jewish community and for other communities in Cork.

   Evening Echo is manifested in a sequence of custom-built lamps, remote timing systems operated from Paris, a highly controlled sense of duration, a list of future dates, an annual announcement in Cork’s Evening Echo newspaper and a promissory agreement. Fleetingly activated on an annual cycle, and intended to exist in perpetuity, the project maintains a delicate position between optimism for its future existence and the possibility of its own discontinuance.

    Maddie Leach’s work is largely project-based, site responsive and conceptually driven and addresses new thinking on art, sociality and place-based practices.  She seeks viable ways of making artworks in order to interpret and respond to unique place-determined content and she is recognised for innovatively investigating ideas of audience spectatorship, expectation and participation in relation to art works. Leach’s projects include commissions for Iteration: Again (Tasmania, 2011), Close Encounters (Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, 2010), One Day Sculpture (2008), the New Zealand publication Speculation for the Venice Biennale 2007 and Trans Versa (The South Project, Chile, 2006).

Evening Echo Art Installation by Maddie Leach, Shalom Park, Cork, 19 December 2017

UNESCO Conference – Cork Learning City 2017

Arts, Cork City Events, Cork History, Enterprise, Improve Your Life, International, Kieran's Council Work, National, Uncategorized

   Cork has been successful in its bid to host the third UNESCO Global Network of Learning Cities Conference in Sept. 2017. The two previous conferences were held in Beijing 2013 and Mexico 2015, each involved over 600 delegates from countries worldwide. The conference will be presented by UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning, held in Cork City Hall, from Sept 18th -20th 2017, supported by Cork City Council and Cork ETB hosted with its Learning City Project partners, UCC, CIT, and other agencies in the city.

Sept 20th Learning Festival Showcase Programme

This is a first for Ireland and for Europe:

    Cork is the only Irish city currently recognized by UNESCO for its excellence in the field of Learning, and was one of just 12 cities globally, and 3 in Europe, presented with inaugural UNESCO Learning City Awards in 2015. A case study of the city was published by UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning (UIL) in Unlocking the Potential of Urban Communities, Case Studies of Twelve Learning Cities also in 2015. The other two European cities are Espoo (Finland) and Swansea.

   Cork successfully bid against 3 other European cities to host the conference because of its track record. The international conference presents Ireland with a unique opportunity to further cement the reputation of the country and the city as a centre of excellence in education and learning. The UIL Directorate team visited Cork during the Lifelong Learning Festivals of 2015 and 2016 and selected the city following a strong bid prepared with the assistance of the Cork Convention Bureau who have recognised experience of hosting international conferences of this scale in the city previously.