For the second year running Headford’s community arts festival, Something In The Water, takes place on the first weekend of October.

The festival began in 2023 as a legacy of the Reimagine Headford Project, where research undertaken by the group highlighted the importance of the arts to the towns sense of place and belonging, and noted a view among respondents that a cultural centre, and the development of the arts, are key to the revitalisation of the town centre.

In 2024, with the support of the Arts Office in Galway County Council, and the Arts Council of Ireland, the festival has set out to build on their achievements in 2023, with plans to draw on local artists and creative talent for workshops and performances, and support them in the creation of new work—as well as fostering the culture of creativity in a rural community, by offering open access events for non-artists that allow participants to explore their own creativity.

As before, the festival will use venues and vacant business premises along Main St. as performance and exhibition spaces, and hopefully succeed in reanimating the town centre for the duration of the festival, and generating greater footfall for local businesses along the street.

In 2023, progamme events were priced so that cost was not a barrier to participation, and allowed children, young people and their families to attend the festival at a minimal cost, in addition to which accessible venues and relaxed performances encouraged all ages and abilities to attend, and the same will apply again this year.

The festival will open on Wednesday October 2nd, with the launch of the Lough Corrib 471 Project, facilitated by Helena McElmeel Architects, in association with Architecture At The Edge which also runs during early October. These temporary installations on Knockferry Pier and Kilbeg Pier are the culmination of a number of collaborative fieldtrips and design workshops that connected four local primary schools, two on each side of the narrowest point of Lough Corrib, which measures only 471 metres. The temporary installations will be formed using scaffolding structures, and will incorporate lighting and visual art work created by the groups over the course of the project.

Thursday October 3rd offers a gentle lead into what will be a jam packed weekend, with a poetry reading and story telling event in The Homeplace Café on Main St., but it’s on Friday that things really take off – with music concerts and the festival’s official launch. Saturday and Sunday offer family workshops in visual art and performance, and clay making, as well as music, amateur dramatics, and some children’s theatre, and a flax festival.

Headford Lace Project have designed and developed a musical performance, A Meitheal for Molly, that involves four local choirs, and a multitude of other local talent in a community performance of music, song and dance to celebrate the ancient tune and song Molly St George which has historical links to Headford’s Lace Industry.
And that’s not all. We are delighted to be able to announce that Con Tempo string quartet will be joining us as part of their Galway Music Residency, and our programme also features four artists selected from applicants to the festivals first ever artists award scheme. Local textile artist Ester Kiely can be found in The Angler’s Rest Hotel on Friday and Sunday, working on her community quilt project, Leath na hOibre, while another local visual artist Veronika Straberger will be facilitating her Born of The Land workshops (venue to be confirmed). The inimitable Dr. Mindflip will perform new music, Samhain Cycle, which will consist of an intricate, ever-changing ambient soundscape – sculpted and explored live using a selection of synthesizers, while an accomplished local pairing, Matthew Berrill and Eoin Wynne, will present a newly-composed suite of music informed by a project incorporating historic river water level data translated to musical notation.

Full details of our festival will be available online in the coming weeks, and our published brochures will be available onlinw, and in and around Headford from mid-September, for now, you might just log on and give us a follow on
Facebook: @somethinginthewaterheadford
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