The culture-focused tent All Curious Minds returns to All Together Now on the August Bank Holiday weekend in Waterford, along with Seanchoíche and Global Solidarity Hub.
All Curious Minds features chats and conversations with literary minds, personalities, and among them this year are novelist Marian Keyes talking to Tom Dunne, actors Clare Dunne and Emmett J Scanlan talking the crime drama series Kin, together with the show’s creator and writer Peter McKenna, and in the company of novelist and Sight and Sound contributor, Nicole Flattery.
Pundit, podcaster and psychotherapist Richie Sadlier (pictured), best-selling author of ‘Recovering’ and ‘Let’s Talk’, will explore, with typical candour and discernment, life’s vagaries and vicissitudes with fellow chronicler of the human moment, the novelist Peter Murphy. Music will come from Irish singer-songwriter David Keenan.
Ornithologist Seán Roynane will discuss, with acclaimed film-maker and DJ Donal Dineen, his all-consuming quest to record the cries and calls of every bird species in Ireland, an avian odyssey memorably articulated in the rapturously received documentary ‘Birdsong’.
Author and researcher Páraic Kerrigan (‘Reeling in the Queers’) will convene a panel to mark the fifty-year anniversary of the founding of the LGBTQ rights movement in Ireland, along with gay rights activist Tonie Walsh, Sara Phillips (co-founder of the Dublin Trans Peer Support Group) and doyenne of drag, the delectable Davina Devine, each emblematic of self-empowerment and liberation for all those who dare to embrace, and celebrate, their resolutely queer and queer-ious selves.
Composer, keyboardist and music theatre producer Roger Doyle, best known for his pioneering electro-acoustic work, will expand on the twenty-fifth anniversary release of his magnum opus ‘Babel’ with the prodigiously curious Donal Fallon, historian nonpareil, and author of ‘Three Castles Burning’ and ‘The Lamplighters of the Phoenix Park’.
Director and documentarian Paul Duane will anatomize his debut feature, ‘All You Need Is Death’ (a cosmic folk-horror film of bootlegged balladry, taboo and transgression, with a searing/soaring score from Lankum’s Ian Lynch) in the company of two of the film’s leads, Olwen Fouéré and Catherine Siggins. The event will be helmed by novelist and contributing editor to ‘The Stinging Fly’, Danny Denton.
John Fleming of The Prongs, Ireland’s flintiest fictional post-punk purveyors, will join comedian Kevin Gildea for a deep dive into his novel ‘The Now Now Express’ (a portrait of the diasporic and self-styled ‘Mocking Boys’, adherents to the existential and the culturally cynical), accompanied by some ‘incendiary cabaret’ from his bandmates.
RTÉ Radio 1’s Louise Duffy will return to All Curious Minds to present a special edition of ‘The Louise Duffy Show Unplugged’, featuring intimate chat and music from some of the festival’s musical guests.
As with previous gatherings, this year’s All Curious Minds tent has again been programmed by Raymond Bell and David Bell.
GLOBAL SOLIDARITY HUB
Global Solidarity Hub is a new addition to the Curious Minds Arena. The Global Solidarity Hub will bring together some of the leading practitioners and the greatest minds working for the advancement of global social justice, incorporating areas such as climate activism, inequality, conflict and education.
The Global Solidarity Hub will have a full programme of workshops, discussions, interactive exhibitions and guest artists performing throughout the weekend. The Global Solidarity Hub programme is curated by Dóchas, GOAL, Sightsavers Ireland and Trócaire.
Come along to the Global Solidarity Hub to get inspired and explore how you can take actions that can have a global impact on the issues that matter to you. Global Solidarity Hub. Creating A Difference.
Activism in Action: Art, Sport & Culture as Forces for Good
Get inspired by leading professionals in the world of arts, sports and culture
who also use their platforms as forces for good.
Hosted by Fionnuala Jay with Panelists; Mikey Cullen, Ben Valla, Sinead Kane, Roisin McAtamney.
In This Climate… Climate Activists Not Cooling Down
An exploration of how to make climate activism more impactful, overcoming criticism and apathy. The second part of the session will
focus on the activists and their work. Hosted By Fionnuala Jay with Panelists; Siobhan Curran, Ineza Umuhoza Grace, Taz Kelleher, Sean McCabe, Darragh Wynne.
Ireland’s 100,000 Welcomes – But Where Are You Really From?
An exploration of narratives around migration in Ireland, and how well we live up to Cead Míle Failte when dealing with migrants. The second part of the session will focus on the personal experiences of the panelists.
Hosted by Leon Diop with Panelists; Noreen Gumbo, Razan Ibrahim, Abdulai Mansaray.
SEANCHOÍCHE
Once again, Seanchoíche will be returning to All Together Now, hosting its own intimate stage across three days of the festival. The storytelling night founded in Dublin and currently taking place across the world in cities like London and Melbourne is a space for people from all corners of life to come and listen and engage with spoken stories, ranging from personal anecdotes, monologues, fictional narratives, to poetry pieces and anything in between.
Seanchoíche is now a podcast, and their most recent episode is a very entertaining one where actor Maud Apatow and Alex Gogarty share a story that links the both of them in a cringe fashion.
