Galway Voices: Focus on the Best of The West
Galway Voices: Stories from the Edge is a new EU supported, youth led digital storytelling project showcasing the creative energy, community spirit and night time vibrancy of Galway’s Westend.
Led entirely by young creatives aged 18–35, the project offers a contemporary portrait of life on the cultural fringe — where emerging artists, makers and storytellers shape the character of the city after dark.
Written and produced by Hysteria Productions, and directed and edited by Bit Dramatic Films, the project brings together a multidisciplinary team of Galway creatives.
The project is funded through the Interreg Northern Periphery and Arctic N LITE project, led by the Western Development Commission, with support from Galway’s Westend Traders and the Galway City Council Night Time Economy programme.
The funding supports the creation of digital experiences that enhance cultural tourism in the Western Region.
Often sitting just beyond traditional tourist routes, Galway’s Westend is a vital cultural ecosystem — home to artists, musicians, performers, independent venues, informal creative networks and a thriving night time social culture.
Galway Voices centres on the lived experiences of the young people who live, work and create in this long-established neighbourhood, amplifying voices rarely reflected in official city narratives.
Through workshops, interviews and creative development sessions, young participants shaped the stories, themes and aesthetics behind the project’s outputs.
The project has resulted in five short fictionalised video portraits, inspired by real experiences shared by young creatives:
■ Zero Plays
■ Eat. Work. Scroll. Sleep. Repeat.
■ Last Orders
■ Flat White Dreams
■ Something’s Brewing
Taken together, the films follow five young artists navigating creative ambition, precarious work, belonging and resilience in the city they call home.
To encourage audiences to explore the Westend, each film can be viewed on YouTube and via a Video Portrait Trail accessed through QR codes placed at key venues in Galway’s Westend, such as Plámás, The Blue Note, Massimo Galway, Westend Canal, Dela, Just Art it, Espresso 44, Gourmet Tart, Bierhaus and Emerald + Wax.
Passers-bys are invited to encounter stories in the spaces and places that inspired them and to experience the neighbourhood as a living cultural landscape.
The films will be released weekly at 8pm each Monday until March 23 and can be viewed at www.thisisgalway.ie/galway-voices-stories-from-the-edge/ and www.hysteriateatar.com/galway-voices.
Written and produced by Hysteria Productions, and directed and edited by Bit Dramatic Films, the project brings together a multidisciplinary team of young creatives.
Hysteria Theatre Collective was selected through an open call process and awarded the tender by the Western Development Commission as part of the N-Lite EU project. Local creatives were identified through open workshops facilitated by Hysteria Productions.
Creatives: Emily Aherne & Jess Harkin – Writers & Producers; Mairead Dewar – Director & Editor; Georgia Lee – Director; Eleni Kalantzi – Director of Photography; Ross Flaherty – First AC; Patrick McHugh – Gaffer; Kevin May – Sound Recordist; and Conor Lee – Set Dresser
The cast of the films included Muireann Hogan, Grace Hurley, Ferdia Pleimean, Verena Barbosa and Conor O’Brien.