Culture, the abortion referendum and the future for women will feature among the talks and debates taking place at the Body&Soul music festival.
The festival organisers on Wednesday announced the line-up of speakers and talks which will take place over the weekend of June 22nd-24th at Ballinlough Castle, Co Westmeath.
The “provocative talks schedule” kicks off on Saturday morning with The Irish Times Breakfast Club on the Woodlands Stage, hosted by this newspaper's Magazine editor Rachel Collins.
The conversation then shifts to the Constitution with a live recording of the Irish Times Women’s podcast where in 'The People Have Spoken' host Kathy Sheridan will review the result of the referendum on the 8th Amendment with Anna Cosgrave of REPEAL Project and Ailbhe Smyth, co-director of Together For Yes.
Arts and Culture editor Hugh Linehan will then attempt to wrap his mind around “the underlying absurdities of artificial borders” with the help of DJ Calvin James and musician Constance Keane (FEARS).
Patrick Freyne and Alison Spittle will speak to Delete Your Account about whether it’s time to “delete all social media” while Activism: Then and Now will look at 50 years of protest movements.
The Wonderlust stage will feature the makers of the West Cork podcast as well as Cork native Louise O’Neill. Una Mullally, meanwhile, will host Come Rhyme with Me – “a spoken word soothing, spirit replenishing, mental massage gasness”.
Louise McSharry and guests Andrea Horan, Sarah Durcan and Mari Kennedy will ask “what does the future look like for women?” while Diarmuid Lyng, Blindboy Boatclub, Colm Mac Con Iomaire and John Cummins will get together to discuss masculinity in crisis.
There’s also Ruth Fitzmaurice in Conversation with Aoife McElwain, sea songs by Inni K. Wonderlust, and musicians Windings, Bantum, Shookrah, Anna B Savage, Sunday Times and Donal Dineen.
Also appearing over the weekend will be Beats Verses Rhymes, Waterford Whispers News and Salon Du Chat.
