FESTIVAL OF THE SENSES AN OPPORTUNITY FOR ARTISTIC DEVELOPMENT
30 October 1996
by tom Gillespie
Castlebar's Celebration of the Senses Festival has been hailed by President Mary Robinson and Tourism Minister Mr. Enda Kenny as a unique and innovative project and it should become an annual event.President Robinson was in Castlebar to officially open the Festival of the Senses at the Linenhall Arts Centre. It was an opportunity. She said, to recognise the very innovative features of this Celebration of the Senses.
President Robinson said: "To invite artists from so many different countries to celebrate the five senses seems to be a very good way to communicate with others, to listen to each other, to look at each other, to have as very real involvement and a deepening of understanding through this celebration of the senses.
"I am delighted to value the work done here in Castlebar by the Linenhall Arts centre".
She had just come from the Mise Freisin experience in St. Mary's Hospital and she knew the Linenhall Arts Centre was very much involved with Macnas and with a lot of support in providing a wonderful experience and involvement in the arts for people with disabilities.
"I saw the success of that and I heard that more than 700 have participated, enjoyed and had been involved and had been able to show their potential and to be stretched in a right sense and excited and really to have a special experience.
"Coming here today I make a link because this is also very innovate in more than one sense, well in five senses.
"It is not only a way of involving a number of artists from different countries, and looking around me I can see it is truly an international gathering, but also it has important implications on the Island of Ireland because it is a renewal of a friendship between Castlebar and Ballymena.
"I am very glad that Mayo County Council and Ballymena Borough Council have been very supportive, that this is part of the link and indeed there is also an involvement with Co-Operation North.
"The idea of the Celebration of the Senses is one that I hope will be taken on an annual basis because it offers, I think, an imaginative, thoughtful and deeply significant way, I would say a spiritual way, of communicating in the fullest possible sense.
"I have a very real sense that this festival and the work of the committee, marks a new development in the already very vibrant arts world here in Castlebar."
President Robinson said the last time she came to Castlebar for a public event of an international sort was for the International Walking Festival.
She was very taken at that time by the number of participants from so many countries who arrive annually in Castlebar for the four day walks.
"I have a sense that there will be a Celebration of the Senses here and that it will be a wonderful opportunity for artistic achievement and development."
Celebration of the Senses chairman, Mr. Declan Durcan said in November last a group of friend came together to see if we could promote Castlebar in a unique way and to see if we could bring to Castlebar experiences of different cultures of the world.
After several long meetings and several hundred ideas we came to the conclusion that a festival in late October would be the ideal way to extend the summer warmth and also to shorten the long winter.
A vast list of festival idea were put forward -- a music festival, a food festival, a poetry and writers weekend, an arts festival, a flower festival, a potato festival and a woolly socks festival.
"However there was one thing in common to all the ideas and that was that all of these events depended upon, at the very least one of our five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.
We have represented all of the five senses in a celebration by artists of different nationalities."
Mr. Durcan welcomed att the artists and he thanked the people of Castlebar who had supported the project.
Tourism and Trade Minister, Mr. Enda Kenny said he felt the organisers of the Festival of the Senses had put their finger on something that is very true.
He said: "People go to festivals all over the place and many of them don't have the quality and the range of what we require.
"But this festival in Castlebar involving multi-cultural people and of all different age groups, is something that we can be very proud of. Hopefully it will be a big success.
"If you look at the Ballina Salmon Festival or the Rose of Tralee, these are successful and long-standing because there is quality put into them.
"I think this Celebration of the Senses as a first will lead onto something very big. This is a
Celebration of the Senses in an international sense."
Connaught Telegraph - News - October 1996
Connaught Telegraph - Sport - October 1996
