Cúirt’s success during Covid-19 ‘a gamechanger’ for other festivals
Some 4,000 people from 30 countries attended 11 live events at the 2020 Cúirt International Festival of Literature over the weekend, after it was moved online due to Covid-19.
More than 3,000 others have tuned in to YouTube since then to watch the video-recordings of readings and interviews with authors including Anne Enright, Kevin Barry, Eimear McBride and Carolyn Forché.
Cúirt director, Sasha de Buyl, who opted to hold an online festival when the regular event had to be cancelled, describes the response from readers and audiences as “absolutely extraordinary.
“They seemed to be getting something really meaningful from it”, she says.
“What we wanted to create and what people were getting, was the sense of a community that you get around a festival. Their response was that it made them feel less isolated.”
All the participating writers, based in Ireland, the UK and the US, were in their own homes, connected online via Galway company, Atlantic Audio.
The readings and interviews took place between Thursday and Saturday, and were clustered together as would happen during a normal Cúirt.
Audiences were encouraged to pre-book events online as they would normally. Then, just ahead of each event, Sasha appeared onscreen to introduce participants, advising viewers to make a cup of tea, pour a drink, settle back and enjoy. That’s what people did, with some taking to social media later on, to compare writers’ bookshelves and working spaces.
“The weather was so lovely, people were sending pictures of themselves enjoying Cúirt sa ghairdín’,” she says with a laugh.
Antrim writer Jan Carson, who read with Kevin Barry, described the online festival as “amazing, inclusive . . . the closest thing I’ve had to a hug in weeks”.
RTÉ Broadcaster Rick O’Shea, who presents The Book Show on Radio 1 and who interviewed novelist Anne Enright on Friday evening, called it “a gamechanger”. He felt it was a role model for other festivals affected by Covid-19.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.