Finding a voice in 2016

AS part of the National Museum of Ireland’s 2016 - Decade of Centenaries public engagement programme, novelist, playwright and poet Dermot Bolger will be writer in residence at the National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts & History between March and August.

Through the arts, the programme will reach out to a wide range of audiences, encouraging fresh explorations of the many themes and issues that relate to this period in our history.

Entitled Finding a Voice: Dermot Bolger Writer in Residence, it's a collaborative project between the National Museum of Ireland and Poetry Ireland. The residency and associated events take inspiration from the Museum’s Easter Week Collections, which form part of the new Proclaiming a Republic - The 1916 Rising exhibition, just opened at the National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts & History at Collins Barracks, Benburb Street, Dublin 7.

The programme will engage with a wide range of audiences across four distinct strands: the schools' workshop programme; a local community workshop programme; an online mentoring clinic; and a series of public talks and events, including the In Conversation with Dermot Bolger series. Events will take place in the museum of Decorative Arts & History in Dublin and at the Museum of Country Life in Turlough, Castlebar.

Tulough Park House will be the venue on August 14 next for Writing the Past: An Afternoon with Dermot Bolger and Donal O’Kelly (time TBC), where they will talk about one of the most tragic figures killed during the Easter Rising, the pacifist, feminist and socialist Francis Sheehy-Skeffington, who suffered a summary execution by a British officer.

Award-winning playwright and actor Donal O’Kelly - one of Ireland’s most acclaimed theatre practitioners - has crafted a new one-man 50-minute play, Hairy Jaysus, which examines Sheehy-Skeffington’s legacy as viewed through the eyes of a Dublin street beggar today.

This event will open with a rare opportunity for an Irish audience to see O’Kelly perform Hairy Jaysus, which opens in New York in April. The performance will be followed by a reading of Dermot Bolger’s poem, The Stolen Future, which is about those children who lost their lives during the Rising. Bolger will then interview O’Kelly about his career as a writer deeply engaged with political and historical themes.

There will be a writing workshop with Dermot in the Museum of Country Life also, taking place on July 23 from 3 p.m. He will also host a writing workshop on July 10 (3 p.m.) in the Museum of Decorative Arts & History, which is the venue for the other In Conversation talks in the series featuring folk musician John Sheahan, poet Paul Durcan, writers Brian Keenan and Jennifer Johnston, and the director of exhibitions and public programming at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres, Piet Chielens.

The events are free, unless otherwise stated, but booking is essential. Bookings for events taking place at the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life can be made via email at educationtph@museum.ie, and for events at the National Museum of Ireland - Decorative Arts & History, they can be made through the Eventbrite links on the museum website. Further information on the Dermot Bolger: Writer in Residence schools workshops and local community writing workshops is also available at Museum.ie.