Looking back at our 2024 summer festival

Scoil na gCláirseach–Festival of Early Irish Harp 2024

Assistant Director’s Report

Participants from around the world joined us in Kilkenny, and online, for Scoil na gCláirseach–Festival of Early Irish Harp, 26 July – 1 August, 2024. Daytime events were held at our main venue, Coláiste Pobail Osraí secondary school, with our evening concerts taking place in the 1000-year-old Parade Tower of Kilkenny Castle. On our final day, we travelled to Dublin for our annual field trip to see the historic Irish harps at Trinity College, the National Museum of Ireland, and the Guinness Storehouse Museum.

This was our third hybrid festival and, building on the success of previous years, we added free public events: an illustrated talk and three 'teatime' concerts  —held at our main venue and live-streamed online— plus a free hands-on walk-in workshop. These popular free events, with leading Irish and international artists, were enjoyed by over 200 people from Ireland and beyond, generating a lot of positive feedback. One visitor to Kilkenny from New Zealand remarked that this was "One of the highlights of my visit to Ireland".

Apart from our local, regional, national, and international audiences at our evening concerts and free events, we had 35 All-Access attendees each day, one of our largest groups in recent years. These were divided evenly between in-person participants, and those who joined us live online from across the globe.

Some of the world’s finest historical, and traditional, musicians from Ireland and abroad performed to a full house at our two concerts in the beautiful medieval Parade Tower of Kilkenny Castle, and our opening concert received a standing ovation from the delighted audience.

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Bringing audiences to Scoil na gCláirseach is fundamental to our success each year. We would like to thank Linda Coogan Byrne of Good Seed PR for working with us to publicise the festival concerts locally and nationally; Maura Uí Chróinín for designing the eye-catching concert posters; and our Kilkenny posterers—Alex Reynolds and Nicola Harding—all of whom contributed to nearly selling out both concerts, despite our being up against the Olympics! As one concert-goer said, "I gave up watching the gymnastics in the Olympics to come here and it was worth it!"

Following on the success of our hybrid festivals in 2022 and 2023, we committed to continuing, and honing, this format so that people who couldn't make it to Kilkenny could be with us from wherever they are around the world. Richard Begley, our technical manager for HHSI online events throughout the year, joined us onsite again this year for in-person audio-visual and internet support. Richard's tireless work and excellent technical skills kept all of our live-streamed events running smoothly, and he 'went the extra mile' to find innovative ways to make our hybrid festival even better. Thanks to 2021 Arts Council Capacity Building funding, we have cameras, mics and other paraphernalia that enable us to stream our events. We are also greatly helped by the COVID-necessitated upgrade in audio-visual capability in each classroom at our daytime venue: this allows us to see and hear our online participants loud and clear on the huge TV monitors.

We would like to thank all of our presenters and performers, who joined us in Kilkenny from across Ireland and abroad to share their expertise and artistry with festival participants and concert audiences. Some of our festival tutors also teach our online courses throughout the year, and have become experts at interacting with both in-person and online participants in each session. And of course the festival events are recorded so participants can access them until the end of the year, making this a nearly six-month festival! 

We would especially like to thank all of the festival participants who have joined us over the years since the first Scoil na gCláirseach back in 2003. Together we've created a warm and supportive community where we can all immerse ourselves in the world of early Irish harp music, traditions, history, and the latest scholarship, and bring the sound of the early Irish harp to audiences in Kilkenny and around the world. Although there will be no Scoil na gCláirseach–Festival of Early Irish Harp in 2025, we have a wealth of other exciting HHSI programming planned, and look forward to seeing you in the coming months.