The Limerick Gathering | Tuesday Programme

‘At last year’s Gathering, there was a powerful sense of solidarity as we named our dissatisfaction, identifying the issues that have been troubling us in the performing arts: exclusion, precarity, funding, gig economy, burnout, AI, sustaining careers as artists and arts workers, political censorship, dysfunctional leadership in government. Since then, we have seen significant political change, locally, nationally, globally, and seen some issues grow even more troubling.In her text responding to the 2024 event, Róisín Stack reminds us that “consensus, which assumes a single solution for all challenges, is not the goal” and that unities-in-difference and idealism are ever more necessary in difficult times.With that in mind, this year we’ve invited a range of colleagues – artists and arts workers – from across the sector and around the country to outline a vision for their desired future of the performing arts. We know we can organise, we’re getting better and better at it, through the work of Performing Arts Forum and other resource orgs, through our unions and through the work of the NCFA.

The question now is what is the vision that we’re working towards? What does change look like?

We invite YOU to join us to consider these visions, to collectively participate in a genuine imagining of what we want, as the community of people putting Irish-made performing arts out into the world and identify our first next steps towards change and a better future for us all.’