Lanesboro very much to the fore as Longford gears up for exciting Culture Night 2024

This year the Annual Culture Night will take place on Friday, September 20 in Longford Town with a great deal of Lanesboro and local participation.

This is the 19th edition of Culture Night and we encourage you to go along and support some of the fascinating productions taking place.

Local Clonfower and Lanesboro lady and artist Anna Peters at her Athena Gallery on Ballymahon Street will be hosting live art and live music for Culture Night.

At the gallery will be a caricature artist and live traditional music from Noel Carberry and friends.

The event will commence at 5pm and will continue until late.

You are invited to go along, have a coffee and enjoy all that the Athena gallery has to offer.

Another Clonfower and Lanesboro person Luke Casserly will bring you on a performative journey which takes you to the Irish bog landscape through scent. Distillation is a response to the recent cessation of the peat harvesting industry in Ireland.

Over the past year, Luke Casserly has collaborated with renowned perfume maker Joan Woods to create a unique distillation of the midlands bog – the place where he grew up – as the starting point for an olfactory encounter which looks at our human relationship to place.

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Dedicated to the future of our broken landscapes – in the hope that by listening to them, we might be able to better understand them.

Part lecture, part performance, the project is an ambitious attempt to look at our human relationship to landscape through scent.

Distillation will take place in the Temperance Hall from 8 to 9pm.

‘Reels on the Bus’ is an interactive traditional music workshop and live trad music session open to secondary school students in Longford.

Reels on the Bus aims to introduce young people to Irish traditional music with a one-hour workshop in Bodhrán.

This workshop allows for 100% participation, where everyone will get a Bodhrán, provided by Music Generation Longford for the event and will be guided by Derryhaun man Noel Carberry amongst others on the basics of the Bodhrán.

Reels on the Bus will take place on the yellow bus at the Attic House on the Ballinalee Road from 4.30 to 6pm.

Local Knock Manor residents, artists Stephanie and Kevin Hanlon are creating ‘The Night Garden’ a site specific installation inspired by characters from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. The installation will be developed using sustainable materials and recycled objects.

The installation is located in the service lane to the right of the Spirit Clothing shop on Main Street and will take place between 7pm and 10pm.

Local Tullyvrane artist Mary Fleming will be part of the County Longford Arts Service and NTE Longford to present ‘Light Bank’ a large-scale outdoor digital projection art event transforming the former Ulster Bank building in the centre of Longford town.

The project aims to transform the Former Ulster Bank building into a canvas of light, illumination and community spirit. 

This event, titled ‘Light Bank’ is a digital mapping project that seeks to blend the rich culture of Longford’s commercial past with contemporary digital art, creating a mesmerising visual spectacle that celebrates the place of Longford as a vibrant town.