Cypriot dancing, Estonian music and Slovenian street theatre are coming to a town near you tomorrow, writes Shane Hegarty
'It's like Paddy's Day, only it's Polish Day. When you see a Pole in the pub, you'll want to buy them a pint." This is how John Cunningham of Letterkenny Arts Centre sums up tomorrow's Day of Welcomes. His town in Co Donegal will host Poland, just as nine other Irish towns will host an accession country each for an occasion that has been described as 10 festivals in one day. But the link between all the events is that they are the showpiece of the Irish EU presidency's cultural programme, an exercise in cultural twinning on a scale not seen here before.
There will be Cypriot folk dancing on the bandstand in Bray; Slovenian street theatre in Limerick; Galway will put on "the last concert in Old Europe", featuring the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra. Meanwhile, the 10 towns have also been encouraged to show off their own local culture, so there will be more familiar fare on offer as well as international collaborative events. If the programmes live up to their billing, they should be impossible to ignore.
"We were keen to make sure that we devised a programme through which people would trip over events rather than have to seek them out," explains Maureen Kennelly, an organiser of Kilkenny's Day of Welcomes for Lithuania.
State-wide, the day was initiated by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and has been overseen by the St Patrick's Festival organisation, which was well-placed because of the links it has established with artistic groups throughout the country in recent years. The towns were invited to take part towards the end of last year, with the Government promising a grant of €50,000 if local authorities would match that sum. Towns were picked so as to the give the day a geographical spread but also based on their artistic infrastructure and experience of hosting past festivals.
The towns were not assigned countries; instead, each selected one. This process was managed with surprising ease. While one might wonder, whether a small country such as Malta might be less in demand than one with the artistic pedigree of the Czech Republic, the fact is that the island has a link with Waterford, as each has a brass band tradition. Meanwhile, Drogheda and Latvia both have strong choral traditions, Limerick (which chose Slovenia) has a Slovenian, Zdenka Badovinac, as curator of this year's EV+A exhibition, and Sligo picked Hungary because its Vogler Quartet was already preparing a Bartók season for this year's Spring Festival. The Czech Republic, as it happens, will be hosted by Killarney simply because it was the first to ask for it.
Some towns had personal reasons for their choices. John Cunningham says he requested Poland for Letterkenny because he already visits the country regularly and has a knowledge of it. He hopes to change a few preconceptions.
"In Ireland, we wouldn't really be that aware of Poland," he says. "We have this idea of it as a boring place of apartment blocks and shipyards. But that's an ignorant view and most of those people that I know who have gone to Poland are enormously affected by the country. They think it is an incredible place."
Yet, the misconceptions have gone both ways. "Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, there were about 60 Irish groups in Poland, so a lot of Polish towns had an affinity with Ireland," says Cunningham. "During these years, though, there was a general feeling of the Celtic Shangri-La, not just in Poland but across several of the eastern European countries. But when communism fell, they found that the West was much more mundane than they might have thought. So when Poles came here they found it disappointing, because they had quite a romantic ideal of Ireland as a mystic isle. It's not necessarily that the links dissipated, it's just that they travelled more and they saw the reality themselves. We want to rekindle the links."
In fact, Cunningham has had to do a little PR for Letterkenny. In Warsaw recently, the curators of the influential Raster Gallery asked him where Letterkenny was. When he showed them a map, they burst out laughing.
"It's possibly the furthest point in the EU that they could go," he says. "But we're now finding huge goodwill. Poznan, one of the country's major cities, is looking for a twin town in Donegal. It's going down very well."
In general, the Irish organisers are finding that the enthusiasm in their visiting countries has been growing to a visible extent. Across the accession states, there has been media coverage. A Slovakian magazine, for instance, has run a competition that will fly 60 winners to Cork for the day.
"There is huge excitement in Lithuania," says Maureen Kennelly. Kilkenny chose that country because its Small Theatre featured at last year's Arts Festival. "The level of awareness of us is higher than it might be here of them."
However, that is changing, she adds, with a local gaelscoil twinning with a school in Vilnius. Meanwhile, the Kilkenny People will have as its front page a Lithuanian newspaper page, while a translated page from the People will be granted the same honour there.
While there was originally a concern within the department that the festivals might be too similar, there is now the feeling that each programme is sufficiently individual to ensure that there will be 10 different festivals, rather than just one spread across the country. There is a lot of face-painting and stilt-walking, but organisers point out that while these may seem predictable, they are vital elements if the events are to attract families and a wider audience.
Some programmes are certainly more adventurous than others. Letterkenny may host Polish fiddle players and an exhibition of photographs of Pope John Paul II's visit home, but it will also offer clubbers a chance to sample Polish house music. Besides, the programmes are not only about artistic exchange.
"The day is about interpreting culture in a wider sense and about the consolidation of meaningful links for the future," says Kennelly. So, there are the more obvious artistic events, but there are also ones that connect on a broader level. Kilkenny, for instance, has invited a Lithuanian monsignor to say Mass. It has also invited a Lithuanian basketball team from Clones. "Basketball is their hurling," explains Kennelly.
There will be sport in Letterkenny too, where a team picked by Packie Bonner will take on a Polish soccer team. These are also opportunities to involve the ex-pat communities living here. In Letterkenny, there was an office joke that the Polish community disappeared when a Polish woman recently moved to another county, but the arts office has since found 50 Poles in the town. While they have not been directly involved in devising the programme, some will be employed as translators and have been kept in touch with developments.
"Being Polish," says Cunningham, "they were very frank. They always say exactly what they mean and let you know how they feel." They are as important a part of the audience as the locals, he insists. There will be Polish beer in the local pubs.
While tomorrow is the focal point, the programmes spill across the weekend and some events will take place earlier. In Galway, last weekend saw a permanent sculpture unveiled on Shop Street that depicts a fictional meeting between Oscar Wilde and Estonian writer Eduard Wilde. This was done as part of the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, to which the Government also gave funding for the inclusion of accession-state writers. Was there a worry that having a large festival so close to the Day of Welcomes might dilute the programme? "I don't think so," says Brendan Ó hEaghra of Galway City Council. "Instead, it's added to it. A festival like Cúirt is well-known anyway and we've associated some things in it with the Day of Welcomes, so it will only highlight this week's event."
He echoes the sentiment of other towns thatthis is about more than one weekend of festivity; it is about setting up cultural and business links for years to come. Chambers of commerce have been working alongside arts centres, mindful of the potential benefits.
"The goodwill factor is not something that's paid in at the stalls," O hEaghra says. "It's intangible. It's about welcoming them through pageantry and festivities, and this can only reflect well on us. We'll definitely look at creating serious links with Estonia. They can only be beneficial, especially between two small countries. It would certainly be a wasted exercise not to."
Series concludes
