St Patrick's Festival 2011 - Dublin

For all those who live in and around Dublin, or for those visiting, or (doing my bit for the promotion of Ireland as a destination in the future), anyone thinking of visiting, see below lists of things happening around this years St Patrick's Day event.

Have a happy St Patrick's Festival everyone

St Patrick's Festival

The festival gets under way today and runs until Sunday, and is themed in honour of Dublin’s designation as Unesco City Of Literature and will see legions of literary luminaries discuss, debate and reflect on Dublin’s cultural heritage.

This evening there’s an open discussion, titled How Ireland Gets Its Voice, examining the ways in which the Irish literary tradition has progressed into genres such as film, television and radio alongside theatre and music, at 6.30pm in the Alexander Hotel, Dublin 2.

On Thursday, the St Patrick’s Day parade, which is the centrepiece of the festival and the biggest open-air street performance in Europe, will also have a literary theme.
Based this year around a specially commissioned short story, Brilliant , by Roddy Doyle, the parade will come in eight “chapters”, each telling a chapter from the story, each performed by a different performing arts company.
The story, which can be downloaded HERE , tells the tale of two children who are hiding under the kitchen table listening to the grown-ups talk about their troubles.
They interpret the discussion to mean a black dog has stolen the city’s funny bone, so they set off to find the dog and the funny bone, and return triumphant.
The parade will also feature marching bands from Dublin, the United States, France and Spain.

“Dublin Swell” will see some of the finest writers and musicians come together to chart the course of literary Dublin in readings, music and song.
Among those performing will be Séamus Heaney, Maeve Binchy, Sebastian Barry, Roddy Doyle, Cathy Kelly, Joseph O’Connor, Paula Meehan, Paul Durcan and Mike Scott .

On Saturday, a literary treasure hunt invites participants to solve clues while finding out about Dublin’s poets and writers.
Teams of four can register at City Hall between 10am and 5pm for a free event with lots of prizes.

There will be numerous music events, including the festival céilí between 4.30pm and 7.30pm this evening in St Stephen’s Green; the Kilfenora Céilí Band play the National Concert Hall today and Thursday evening; a range of Irish bands play Vicar Street at 7.30pm this evening in an event titled Ceol , and Trad Trails sees different Irish musicians playing at street locations throughout Dublin city today, Thursday and Saturday.

The Skyfest fireworks extravaganza is in Wexford town this year, between 6.30pm and 8.30pm on Saturday