Liverpool Irish Festival announces 10 day online programme

Liverpool Irish Festival is being staged online for 2020 with Patrick Kielty among those taking part in the October event.

Tickets are now available for the festival which runs from October 15-25.

This year’s festival explores the theme of exchange through art, conversation, music and history and how it connects communities and crosses borders.

Irish comedian and TV presenter Patrick Kielty headlines the programme with a special event on October 17 called Hard Histories, Positive Futures.

The 49-year-old, who was a teenager when his father was killed by paramilitary gunmen, made a BBC documentary – My Dad, The Peace Deal and Me - to mark 20 years of the Good Friday Agreement.

In this special event for Liverpool Irish Festival he interviews representatives from Northern Ireland’s Commission for Victims and Survivors, and the question is asked - what is its role and how are the voices of victims and survivors of The Troubles heard?

The annual festival was started in 2003 with the aim of celebrating Ireland’s contribution to Liverpool’s cultural identity and heritage. Events usually centre around music, performance, cinema, literature, art, talks, walks, debates and a popular celebratory ceilidh in St George’s Hall.

This year’s online festival also includes a link-up with Cork-based independent music label Unemployable Promotions which will stage a showcase of its roster of artists; singer and musician Colm Keegan and Glaswegian cellist Laura Durrant, and a live trad DJ set from Paddy Callaghan.

Liverpool Lambs. Top: Patrick Kielty

Award-winning former CNN correspondent Mike Chinoy discusses his new biography of Kevin Boyle, co-founder of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association.

The Celtic Animation Film Festival returns with a programme of short animations curated especially for the Liverpool event.

Helix Productions presents its play Mrs Shaw Herself about the life of Charlotte Payne-Townshend, suffragist, Fabian and wife of dramatist and critic George Bernard Shaw, while Liverpool Lambs – which was performed as part of the 2016 festival – returns with its tale of the 50 Liverpool volunteers involved in the Easter Uprising of 1916.

And there will also be a series of outdoor walks and tours exploring the city’s Irish heritage.

Liverpool Irish Festival runs from October 15-25. For more details about the full programme and tickets, visit the website HERE