The 38th Tyneside Irish Festival, the longest established event of its type in Britain, starts on Friday 18 October and every year we try to do something special. Our first few festival’s featured nights where we amateurs held huge ceilis in The Guildhall, carrying in the PA systems and barrels of Guinness in the back of Gerry Lynch’s car to deal with a swirling masses of drunken celebrants who were often trying to forget the news from “back home”. We printed leaflets and handed them out, word got around and the community rallied around because then it really needed to.
Since that time a lot has changed; The Dubliners, The Chieftains, Shane and Sinead have gone, the showbands are paid off and Guinness Zero allows drinking without hangovers. Nowadays it can be more difficult to get an audience as people have more leisure options than before and many prefer to stay in with their socks on, doom scrolling the socials and waiting for some poor feller to pedal a takeaway to them. But there’s still some things that can’t be seen on a three inch screen and require good company gathering together to emphasise their cultural worth. Our first event is something which deserves the attention of our modern world because it gives some hope that the kind of communal hatred which wants to extinguish “the other” culture, community and future from the land can sometimes, with time, patience and hard work, be overcome.
Something different
This year we’re starting the festival with something that has never been seen as a complete combined art exhibition before in Britain, the Peace Heroines exhibition at The Gallowgate Gallery on the top floor of the Centre. This exhibition, curated in Newcastle by Petra Ondrova, was commissioned in 2023 by the Herstory Educational Trust and was shown to vast acclaim. It depicts the women who inspired, created and maintained peace between communities with their exceptional dynamism and bravery through the grim decades in Belfast between the 1960s to the present day.
The striking artwork by Frizz is combined with information boards which describe their struggle against the weight of generational hatreds and the seemingly invincible violence that dominated our news agenda and their lives. The first night will be hosted by Sarah Mangan and her team at the Irish North of England Consulate, it will feature Dr Sarah Campbell and Baroness Joyce Quinn talking about our old friend and Newcastle city centre resident, Mo Mowlam. The art will be unveiled and the ethereal beauty and talent of harpist Fiana Ni Chonnaill will amaze those lucky enough to get a seat in the Gallowgate Gallery to listen to her music.
If you can’t make the Friday, then tickets are available for the Saturday night where there’s more astounding harp from Fiana, but no speeches. The exhibition will continue into November so please come and see it in the newest art gallery on Tyneside.
That same night in St. Aloysius Hall in Hebburn, one of my favourite people and a woman with a voice of the highest quality performs old Irish favourites and she’ll be in the Tyneside Irish Centre on the Sunday night to finish off the weekend. That Sunday afternoon though we again have something different. Bread making. Bread making live on stage with insights into the Irish language produced in conjunction with Dublin’s legendary Abbey Theatre and performed by Manchan Mangam. The show is entitled “Aram & Im” meaning “Bread’n’Butter” and celebrates the mysterious glories of our natural world and includes audience participation in the churning of the butter. We are at pains to point out that knowledge of Gaelic is not required but aside from that, I’ve never roadied anything like this before and I’m as curious as you should be. The succulent jam on the bread and butter will be provided by our great friend Pat Speight, the greatest storyteller on earth, direct from Cork City and he will be around on Friday, Saturday (for the match probably) and Sunday. He’s a man of learning, philosophy, grace and immense humanity. He can bring tears of laughter and catch you unaware with the realisation of emotion buried deep. Seek him out and listen to his wisdom.
During the week
In the week we will have a lecture on Monday by Dr Cambbell on Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, who will be with us later on in the festival, and on Tuesday in South Shields Carmel Kelly on a local teacher with a past, Gilbert Barrington. For those who enjoy our community outreach programme, Raised on Songs and Stories (ROSS), you will find them in St. Mary’s Church in Sunderland on Monday between noon and 3pm, where you can get your dinner and meet up with friends, some of whom you may not know yet and sing some songs with the good people there.
On Thursday 24October we return to our central theme of Peace and Reconciliation as we show the film “Mothers of Peace” depicting a story of the women of The Shankill and The Falls and the lesson that “healing comes in surprising ways”. It’s on in The Irish Centre at 3pm and 7pm and admission is free.
We then have one of the highlights of the festival with the return of the masterly Tommy Sands, a man who writes songs of social justice interspersed with humanity and respect. He’s a man gracious enough to admit that he’s not necessarily trying to win the argument, but trying to create a better level of disagreement, which is exactly how civilised societies behave. He’s accompanied by Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, the inimitable civil rights leader, former politician, community activist and lover of traditional song. She was on a picket line at Reyrolles in Hebburn in 1971 with TC so we owe her a hearty Tyneside welcome for that alone, as well as the best of order to all who wish to listen to her experience.
Ceili and Family Fun Day
Saturday 26October continues the other festival theme of food and conviviality as we host our first ceili supper where there’s a band with caller to guide you through the dances, two Irish dancing schools performing and “traditional” food. That probably means that us salad dodgers will be very happy. We conclude on Sunday 27October, when we’ve all had an hour’s extra sleep with the Family Fun Day where traditional music from the Comhaltas group, dancers and storytelling will make the kids tired for teatime. That night we finish things off with the End of Festival party for diehard survivors of cultural traditions entailing a trip down every memory lane in every village, town and city from all across the two Lands of Saints and Scholars, Ireland and Northumbria.
It hardly needs to be said, but I will anyway, that all are welcome to all of our events and the Tyneside Irish Festival illustrates how people can always share our beautiful world with culture and dignity, but sometimes that has to be worked for with everything from quiet diplomacy to loud music. At the heart of anything decent is the restless and vulnerable human spirit which is always nourished by peace but easily poisoned by hatred. We hope that our small festival which started in the dark days of The Troubles is seen as one of the many institutions that aim to carry people through to a better future.
Go easy now.
Details of all the events are on the Tyneside Irish Cultural Society website found here.
