This week on Inside Culture Fionn Davenport speaks to artist Breda Burns about Archiving Activism in Mayo/Sligo from the 1970s through to the 1990s; two women talk about writing their debut novels later in life and how they both drew on their family histories to create two very different stories; we discover how one publican took 20,000 Small Town Portraits from his bar in Macroom, County Cork; and we head along to The Project Arts Centre for Eva O’Connor’s latest play produced by Fishamble ‘Maz and Bricks’.
As part of the Bealtaine Festival, artist Breda Burns created Archiving Activism looks back at the artist-led movement that emerged in the Mayo/Sligo region during the 1970s up until the 1990s and how it became the fabric of the community.
Two women who have written debut novels in a very different style and on a very different subject matters but both draw from their families and histories. Fionn speaks to Arja Kajermo, author of The Iron Age and Caroline Preston author of The Tumult.
Irish publican/photographer Dennis Dinneen took over 20,000 portraits photographs in his makeshift studio at the back of his pub in Macroom, County Cork. A selection of these Small Town Portraits have been curated for an exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin offering an intriguing snapshot of rural Ireland from the 1950s to the 1970s. Fionn met with its creative directorDavid J Moore and Dennis’s son Lar Dinneen.
Maz and Bricks, the latest play from Fishamble, tells the story of two young people who meet over the course of a day in Dublin. Maz is attending a ‘Repeal the 8th’ demonstration, while Bricks is going to meet the mother of his young daughter. As the day unfolds, the two become unlikely friends, changing each other in ways they never thought possible. Fionn went to The Project Arts Centre to meet with the play’s writer and lead actress Eva O’Connor, its director Jim Culleton and lead actor Stephen Jones.
Broadcast on Monday, 08th May 2017.
