James Connolly Festival, 2019 7–12 May

Event details supplied by Rachel Whittaker

The James Connolly festival, (Tuesday May 7-Sunday May 12, 2019) now in its fifth year, is an annual community-centred celebration  of music, film, theatre and debate, with a radical twist.

Since its foundation in 2014,  JCF has aimed to bring together fellow travellers, critics and all-comers in a conversation through words, music and performance about where our society is, and where it wants to go.

In 2017, we marked the centenary of the October Revolution. Last year we remember 150 years since the birth, in the Little Ireland district of Cowgate in Edinburgh, of James Connolly, trade unionist, socialist and Irish republican.   This year on our fifth anniversary, we look the the almost unbelievable state of chassis the world finds itself in…

Connolly

Connolly was one of the founders of the Irish trade union movement, so one of our main goals will be to highlight the importance of trade unions for workers, especially among the young.

More broadly the festival is also  committed to promoting  art, feminism, culture and politics, embracing progressive ideas in a comfortable space for debate that promotes the exchange of ideas.

An extension of the 'James Connolly Memorial Weekend', in previous years, the festival has hosted Ifta award-winning actor/writer John Connors, comedian and writer and star of RTÉ's Nowhere Fast, Alison Spittle and musician Fiach, For the debate strand participants have included TDs Clare Daly, Mick Wallace and trade unionist Brendan Ogle, among many others.

Acclaimed national and international figures including Catalan nun and activist Sister Teresa Forcades and academics James Petras and Zoltan Zigedy  have all delivered the James Connolly Memorial lecture. 

Every year the lecture is followed by a wreath-laying ceremony at Arbour Hill on  Sunday, to mark the occasion of Connolly's execution and to pay tribute to him and to the other leaders of the 1916 rising.

James Connolly Festival 2019, Tuesday May 7- Sunday, May 12, 2019, Connolly Books, The New Theatre, 43 East Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2. Ph:  +353 1

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