We Galwegians are divorced from the Galway Arts Festival, but want to love it again!

Everyone hates a whinger who comes out with the same knocking copy each year. Yet once again I find myself looking ahead to the Galway Arts Festival with a mixture of excitement, hurt and sadness.
I couldn’t pin down exactly why, until I read in this Noble Rag a few weeks ago an interview with Noeline Kavanagh, the Director of this year’s Macnas Arts Festival Parade.
“Macnas is like the largest divorcee in Galway.” she said. “Everybody has a relationship with it.”
There it was: replace the word ‘Macnas’ with ‘Galway Arts Festival’, and that’s how I feel. We Galwegians used to be married to the Galway Arts Festival. We lived in the same place, loved each other, had our ups and downs of course, but generally knew that we were good together. These days, the people of Galway feel so divorced from the Galway Arts Festival, they can barely remember what it was like to love it.
I want us to renew our vows. I want the Galway Arts Festival to ask us to move back in; to woo us; love us; kiss us and lick us the way it used to.
I’m not sitting here on my voluptuous arse trying to diss that plethora of extremely talented people who put a vast amount of creativity and energy into the two week splurge.
I think they do a fantastic job, but somewhere along the way the whole affair was lost.
I talk to a lot of people, and at the moment the word on the street is that shows are simply too expensive. To be fair, I don’t think that price is the single biggest factor in the decline of the Galway Arts Festival. There are many cheaper happenings in this year’s programme than other years, but through their pricing policy we glimpse how badly the Galway Arts Festival has lost touch with the people of Galway.
I wanted to see the New York Dolls, Femi Kuti and Primal Scream, for which I would pay €112, to stand at all three gigs. But what really made me angry was the fact that if I was on the dole, I’d still have to pay €110 for those three tickets.
For god’s sake, get real, Arts Festival people! Are you trying to intimidate the poor with art? Do you want us once again to believe that art exists only for the affluent élite? Isn’t that the opposite of what the Galway Arts Festival once stood for?
Climb out of your ivory towers and take a look at how many of us have been laid off, or are just plain broke. Cop on to the fact that a night out which starts with a pair of tickets at €90 belongs to a dream of a Galway past, and exists now as an insulting anachronism.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the Tiger is dead, and we’re trying to stay alive by picking mouthfuls from its rotten corpse.
We all have our personal beefs about what is wrong with the Galway Arts Festival.
Project 06 splendidly reminded us how vital it is to include local artists and performers, yet each year, the official word comes forth that the Arts Festival have pulled off another major success.
Trouble is, for years now, it hasn’t felt like a success to us, the people of this city. Let’s learn from the dazzling success of the Volvo Ocean Race. If the organisers of the Galway Arts Festival understand anything of Galway City at all, they know that you could take a burnt banana skin, mount it on top of a bus shelter, and advertise ‘The ‘Burnt Banana Skin On Top Of The Bus Shelter Festival - the biggest thing to hit Galway since last Tuesday Afternoon!’, and as long as the people of this great city were behind it, hundreds of thousands of people would flock to Galway, because we’re the finest hosts in the best city in the world to throw a party, where fun is free and family-oriented.
Don’t tell me a over a half a million people came to our little city to see a sail puff in the wind. They came because Galway is uniquely packed with brilliant, skilful and diverse talents. We’ll give you the time of your lives, as we do every year during Race Week, but the joy of Galway is on the streets.
Doubtless during the Galway Arts Festival, our city centre will be strewn with buskers and performers of all kinds, which is just as well, because this year’s Galway Arts Festival programme lists a paltry 2 street acts, performing in total 5 times on 3 different days.
Shame on you, Galway Arts Festival.
If this marriage is ever going to work again, you really need to listen, learn and understand that whereas 15 years ago we were all buzzed up and proud of you, now you appear like a distant lost relative who expects us to run around, cook, clean, sweat and serve whenever you turn up on our doorstep.
As for the 10.00pm start time of the Macnas Parade, I say again, shame on you!
Parents simply won’t want to expose small children to crushed hordes of drunken midnight revellers. I’m sorry, Noeline, because I understand what you are trying to achieve with your segmented parade that tells a story, but who is entertaining who here?
You don’t see the purpose in “walking along with a rail of images that snake through the streets”?
Well, let me enlighten you. The purpose of the Macnas Parade is to say ‘Thanks!’ to the people of Galway with a dazzlingly fun and colourful event that can be enjoyed by people of all ages. If you are with Daddy at Spanish Arch and Mammy is in Shop Street with Granny, you’ll all see the same parade and later share your thrills and joys: it’s what they call a ‘communal event’.
Do I have any positive suggestions? Why yes! In order to save this sick marriage between the Galway Arts Festival and the people of Galway City, first quadruple the free street theatre; return the Parade to the afternoon; and offer a hefty price concessions on all tickets sold to locals, upon production of a locally-addressed utility bill.
Then we might learn to love you again, and put the best of Galway - the fun, family and free - back into our own Arts Festival.

Even if we never buy tickets, we're all affected by the Galway Arts Festival!

Recently I was asked what I thought about the Galway Arts Festival. Now that nostalgia ain't what it used to be, I tried my darndest not to allow my memory to turn the past into a Bulmer's cider commercial, where buxom girls wore frilly frocks; the sun shone from a cloudless sky; there was not one miserable fecker pulling a long face in sight; and we had all the time in the world to sit around and laugh and flirt and get pissed on cider.
Trouble is, the first memory my addled brainbox harvests of attending a Galway Arts Festival event looks exactly like a Bulmer's commercial.
Hundreds of happy sweaty young bodies are crammed into the Festival Big Top. There is straw on the floor. To my left, thick-set farmer's sons from Abbeyknockmoy; to my right, brick shithouse trucker's nephews from Tuam. The air is thick with the smell of beer and mud, and up on stage, the Saw Doctors are playing a blinder at home.
To this recently-arrived London boy, that night was a revelation. I was so musically and spiritually far away from the Marquee on Wardour Street, I could have been in Nebraska, or a different universe. But hell, I enjoyed the gig. That night was made possible for me by the inestimable Ollie Jennings, himself a co-founder of the Arts Festival.
Back then, writing a colyoom in this Noble Rag under a nom de plume, I had complained that while the Shams were enjoying worldwide success, they were at risk of neglecting the very roots that had inspired their music and their fanbase.
Months later, an envelope appeared in the newsroom, bearing two tickets to the Sawdoctors' gig in the Festival Big Top.
I've been around the block a few times, and am not easily surprised, but this act of professionalism truly impressed me. Not only did Ollie remember an isolated item in an old colyoom, but he then acted to show me that I was wrong.
Ollie was also on board when Project 06 took on the Arts Festival a couple of years ago, in a successful effort to reclaim the Festival for the people of Galway.
Project 06 focused to a great extent on the participation of local artists, performers and artistic talent, while this colyoom has for many years pleaded that the Arts Festival organisers should work harder to excite and stimulate the local population, through a greater emphasis on small street-based performances, so that we all might feel we live in a Festival City, and not merely a city with a festival.
But far too many column inches have already gone that way, while not enough have extolled the Macnas Parade.
When you live in Galway City, the Arts Festival just happens around you. The source of much revenue to some, to most of the locals it's just something that's happening that makes your life a little more difficult for a couple of weeks. There are well-to-do arty-farty types sitting in traffic jams and outside your pubs, and lots of shows you can't afford, or haven't the time to go to.
To us the Macnas Parade is much more than an event. Galwegians take the parade as a massive 'Thank You', and certainly, all of my favourite memories of the Arts Festival come from parades of the past, splendid and vibrant in their larger-than-life colours and forms. I particularly recall the Noah's Ark parade, with the God figure shooting water out of his gigantic fingertips.
The Macnas Parade brings together all the locals, tourists and arty types and stretches across our collective faces the ecstatic smile of an overexcited five year-old.
This year we have another night time parade, bringing to my mind the night of the first, when 'Cargo de Nuit' were due to make their way to South Park.
I was at that time living in a house that faced right onto the Swamp, so I'd have had the perfect view of all the parade madness and promised spectacular firework display, had it not been for the fact that I was working nights, looking after an elderly gentleman suffering from the later stages of Alzheimer's.
As I made my way to work, I was feeling really jealous of the excited crowds I passed heading whence I came, towards the show.
Later, as I ate an evening meal with my patient (let's call him Peter) and his wife, I thought it best to warn him of the night's proceedings.
"Just wanted to let you know, Peter, that if you hear loud bangs later on, it is only the fireworks from the Festival Parade."
Peter looked at me with completely blank eyes, and a little piece of his apple crumble slid slowly out of his mouth and down his chin.
"Who are you?"
"I am Charlie, Peter!"
Peter smiled warmly.
"Oh yes. Hello, Charlie."
At this point his wife, who was as short-tempered and impatient as her husband was delightful and gentle, turned to have a go at me.
"What's the point in you saying that to him? He cannot even remember your name. He cannot remember my name a lot of the time. How could he possibly remember something that won't happen for hours yet? Don't go trying to confuse him with all this nonsense talk of fireworks. Haven't I enough to think about without you worrying my poor Peter with all this fireworks nonsense."
Somewhat taken aback by the ferocity of her onslaught, I turned once again to look at Peter, sitting placidly and apparently completely unaware of our conversation.
Maybe she was right.
Maybe I had been expecting too much.
Hours later, when the firework display started, I heard Peter emit a little whimper.
Leaping out of my tiny bed to stand beside his, I asked Peter if he was okay.
"Oh yes. It was the loud noise. It woke me up. Who are you?"
"I am Charlie, Peter. "
"Oh yes, Charlie. I know you. Thank you, Charlie."
"My pleasure, Peter. Don't worry about the bangs. They'll stop soon."
"Oh I know. They are the fireworks from the parade."
'Why you sly old dog!' I thought to myself. 'You understood exactly what we were talking about, and simply chose not to engage the wife!'
Even though I rarely attend an event, the Galway Arts Festival is as much a part of my city Summer life as rain and wind.