With the news that Carlow Arts Festival (Éigse) Director Hugo Jellett will be stepping aside at the end of the year (December 2015) to take up a new role as CEO of a well-known charity, the Board of the Festival will immediately begin recruitment for a successor.
Cornelia McCarthy, Chairperson of the Festival said: “The festival has come on great strides in recent years, and, with Carlow now the home to the largest purpose-built gallery in the country the VISUAL, and a vibrant and pioneering Arts Office, Carlow has the opportunity to be a great leader in the cultural landscape. The Carlow Arts Festival has the heritage and reputation to see it blossom further in the coming years, and we look forward to welcoming a new Director to take on the baton.”
Hugo Jellett remarked “For the past four years in Carlow, I have had an incredible opportunity with the Carlow Arts Festival team to try some new initiatives and engage those curious to give them a go. It’s a good time to give someone else a chance to let their imagination take this 37-year-old festival on a new trajectory. I am sure I will find it hard not to stay involved (or at least interested) in some capacity with the festival in the coming years, and I’m tremendously grateful for the guidance of my chairwomen Nuala Grogan and Cornelia McCarthy since being here.”
In the past few years, the Arts Festival has seen record submission numbers for its Éigse Open Submission Visual Art Prize, collaborations with Visual such as Brian Duggan’s full size timber barn roller-skate rink, Ben Long’s immense Horse Scaffolding Sculpture, and Joana Vasconcelos’s colossal Valkryie suspended from the ceiling of the Main Gallery. It hosted the History Festival of Ireland for three years, featuring luminaries such as Stephen Rea, Margaret MacMillan, Victoria Glendinning, David Norris and Ruth Dudley Edwards. And it continues to provide one of the most engaging spoken word strands in Ireland with the Borris House Festival of Writing & Ideas. Last year, an intriguing initiative began which involved navigating a caravan of barges down the River Barrow, and stopping off in a different village each night to offer a music and food festival. Recurring partnerships with Aspiro, Carlow Little Theatre, Carlow College of Music, The University of West Florida, Wide Open Music, Carlow Afro Caribbean Gospel Choir, Barrow Valley Group, Carlow Photographic Society, Nine Stones Group, and others, have provided opportunities to foster excellent creative content. And an ambitious and ongoing attempt to reimagine the streets of Carlow through cultural regeneration resulted in multiple pop-up enterprises from galleries to speakeasies, design shops to vintage stores, has left a strong impact… not least the festival’s own permanent presence on Dublin Street.
Funded by the Arts Council, Carlow County Council, and with grants from Failte Ireland, CCCDP, Waterways Ireland, it is also financed by private givers and corporate philanthropists, sponsors and a strong box office income.
The position of CEO will be advertised in the coming days, with a November 26 Closing Date, and the festival plans to recruit a new Director to start in early 2016. See www.carlowartsfestival.com, call 059 9173381, or email Lisa on lwilliamson@carlowartsfestival.com for more information.
The 2016 Carlow Arts Festival takes place 10-19 June across County Carlow and in Carlow Town.
