Culture Night

Culture Night came back last month for its 13th year and was bigger than ever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With an attendance of up to 400,000, Culture Night is one of Ireland’s biggest festivals.

Twelve years ago, Culture Night started up as just a small event in Dublin’s Temple Bar. Now it has evolved into a grand-scale national event featuring all the different cultures that Ireland has to offer.

The Liberties area of Dublin was one area that offered plenty of cultural activities in places like Gallery Zozimus, The Constant Knitter, and Dublin City Hall.

It was a great night for shops and businesses, as businesses that usually close up shop in the evening open up till late on this special night.

One of those businesses is the Jam Art Factory in which the shopkeeper, Mark told us: “Culture Night is great for business. Normally we open 10 o’ clock. People don’t get in to see because they usually work during the normal hours when we’re open. It has so much advertisement, so much promotion, we get a lot of people through the doors who didn’t know that we exist before. So, it’s great for business.”

Down at Camden Street in the Liberties covers international cultural events, including Hungarian Culture Days, An Introduction to Afghan Music at the Lantern Intercultural Centre. and talks from Concern Worldwide- Ireland’s largest aid organisation.

The Liberty had the opportunity to speak with the manager of the Hungarian Culture Days, Norbert, just before the event started: “This event is a bridge event between four dances and foreign groups. We are going to show Bulgarian, Polish, Slovakian and Hungarian foreign dances. This event is not particular about Hungary, its about other nations as well to dance together.”

It may seem like Culture Night is relatively unknown to the public in the early hours of the evening; but the hype of Culture Night finally kicked in when night fell.

The biggest event of the day was none other than RTE’s open-air concert at Dublin Castle. The event, always a crowd-puller was filled with music and poetry. Guest performances include Stephen James, Olivia Leary, Jerry Fish and more.

One passerby spoke to the Liberty: “It was excellent, I thought it was really enjoyable, I loved the different varieties of music and arts. I thought they did up the upper courtyard really well. I also enjoyed the bits of jazz the orchestra made.”

Rebel Liberties, a tour which explores the revolutionary history of Dublin’s Liberties from the United Irishmen to the Irish Civil War was also available that night.

The Liberty had the opportunity to catch a breathtaking aerial performance by Aerial Cirque in Dame Street at a quarter to nine.

Joey Kavanagh, the communications manager of Culture Night was effervescent when talking about Culture Night. He said: “There is a huge amount of cultures and arts to celebrate in Ireland. It’s a creative explosion every year when it happens in September. It’s a nice way to have an evening to revel in all of the great cultural gems the country has to offer.”