Laois town to host new summer arts and heritage festival

A Laois town is getting a lovely last minute arts and heritage festival this summer, and the great news is that it is free to attend.

Details of the Mountmellick Heritage and Arts Festival have just been announced, organised by Mountmellick Arts Collective.

It offers an incredibly packed schedule of great heritage and art events on the weekend of July 12, 13 and 14.

Arts Collective members Declan Furlong and Colette Rafter are the main organisers.

“It’s exciting and it’s local,” Declan told the Leinster Express / Laois Live.

On Friday night at 8pm there will be a video art exhibition celebrating Mountmellick’s rich history, followed with a showing of the remastered video of the famine commemoration walk in 1995, that travelled from Graigue to the Ivy cemetery. 

Exhibited alongside will be a curated film on a loop featuring the videos of Offaly geologist and ecologist John Feehan and the stunning micro nature photography of Tina Claffey.

Later in The Druid pub, is a one-man show with well known Laois poet, storyteller and writer Mick Creagh. That will be followed immediately by followed by an Open Mic.

“We hope for poets, rappers and short storytellers, spoken word artists and musicians to take part and have a ball,” Declan explained. 

Celebrating neurodiversity, the Muiriosa Foundation is organising the painting of a street mural over the weekend. The charity is working with an artist and some local people to create a mural that speaks to their reality. It will be on a wall beside SuperValu - next to the bottle return machine. 

There will be an exhibition of Mountmellick Work, the town’s famous quaker ‘white on white’ embroidery style, in St Paul’s Church of Ireland parish hall on Saturday and Sunday.

The pretty Methodist church is opening its doors to any artists who would like to exhibit their work. Set-up is on Friday, the exhibition is on Saturday. 

There will be a lecture in the church at 2.30pm on Saturday, by Dr Tapasya Narang, an English lecturer from Dublin City University, titled Poetry and the Ephemeral’.  

On Saturday night there will be live folk and trad music in Mountmellick pubs as part of the festival.

Then on Sunday, all are invited to the Balcony Theatre for a Mountmellick Sunday Miscellany, a mix of local spoken stories and music, from 3pm to 5pm.

A Gaiety Intro to Improv lesson is taking place earlier in the week, but is largely booked out.

The festival is supported by funding from Creative Ireland Laois. A contribution box will be accessible at the Sunday Miscellany event. Follow festival updates on social media.