Letterfrack celebrates Bog Week with arts and community events

Date Published: 17-May-2012

Art exhibitions, concerts, parish walks, cycling and soccer will all form part of Conamara Bog Week which opens in Letterfrack on Friday next, May 25 and runs until June 4.

This annual celebration of Ireland’s bogs was first held in 1984 and has been going strong ever since.

This year’s festival will open on May 25 with a concert in Ellis Hall at 1.30pm, when children from Letterfrack National School will provide music and dance for members of the Ballinakill Active Age Group.

Later that evening, there will be an exhibition in the National Park on the theme of landscape and place. Take Four features the work of artists Jay Murphy, Laura Cull, Bernie Dignam and Gemma Coyne

The evening will close with two concerts. The first in Molly’s Bar kicks off at 9.30 and includes Liz Kane on fiddle, Johnny Connolly on melodeon and Marcus Hernon on flute. The second is in the Renvyle Inn and the line-up includes Inishbofin melodeon player Johnny O’Halloran, with Gerry Whelan on banjo and Greg Cotter on guitar and vocals.

A 5k Connemara Fun Run on May 27 is designed to get families involved, according to Leo Hallissey of Conamara Environmental Education Centre, who is urging people to “run, skip, walk and enjoy” the 5k circuit from Tullycross to Letterfrack. This is a fundraiser for local youth projects and starts at 2pm.

Throughout the week ecologists and artists will visit schools in the area to explain the wonders of the local landscape. Speakers will include Gordon Darcy and Michael Jacobs. School gardens, vegetable growing and field trips will also form part of the programme.

Bog Week will continue into the June Bank Holiday Weekend with some great music, singing and dancing from a great line up of performers. They include Seán Tyrell, Johnny Óg Connolly, Mick Conneely, Brendan McGrath, Mary Staunton, Liz Kane, Sean Ryan, the Hernon Family, Conor and Máire Keane, Siobhán Peoples, Marie Walsh, Noreen O’Sullivan, Yvonne Kane and many other friends and guests.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.