The Five Lamps Arts Festival 2021

Every year the Five Lamps Arts Festival lights up the arts in Dublin’s North Inner City at the beginning of Spring with loads of events happening during a week in various  venues around the area.

This year they have a hybrid edition.

The programme started in March this year when they launched ‘Rock Hard Women”, an online event to celebrate Women History Month.

The festival production team recorded 24 female artists in one day at the Grand Social.

The videos are available to watch on their YouTube channel, the acts include dance, theatre, poetry, circus, music and stand-up comedy.

They had a brilliant and diverse lineup of female artists, Farah Elle, Ines Khai, Jan Brierton, Ciara Ní É, Fionnuala Halpin, Anne Noonan and a whole bunch of Rock Hard Women.

In Sheriff Hall over the weekend there was Aduntas, an exhibition of paintings by local artist Tara Kearns.

Tara is from Sheriff Street and the art work is the result of her research into the Sheriff Street area, exploring sociological and economic problems this area faces, whilst discovering how such problems have a unique impact on identity.

This exhibition was to happen in 2020 in CHQ Buildings but under the circumstances we are all living in, the work is only open to the public now.

Another exhibition by Tara Kearns will be held in D Light studios from 25th July.

The exhibition, ‘Home is where the Heart is’, about the homeless crisis in Dublin, is beautifully portrayed by the artist and her work in collaboration with Inner City Helping Homeless. The development and the exhibition of this work came about because of commission funding from the Arts Council.

In CHQ Buildings the festival is holding PALIMPSEST, an exhibition of work by three artists who live in the area, Katherine Sankey, Laragh Pittman and Rebecca Kehoe. This is a surprising and beautiful exhibition that will be open to visitors from 13th to 31st July.

Online there are films including one from the director Joe O’Byrne about Samia an athlete from Somalia, from Carnation Theatre there is a film called Midwives of the Nation, about the women of 1916 – the dispatchers, the doctors, the gunrunners, the nurses, the smugglers, the big characters and the not so big characters of the Easter Rising.

A mockumentary by Grace Corry, ‘Nearby Dublin’ promises to get everyone laughing. The characters Heather Nestor (Teri Fitzgerald) and Tim Thompson (Mark O’Reilly), are leading members in the People Against Seagulls movement, and the mockumentary follows them on their quest for justice in the face of intimidation by a group of seagulls who, they say, are ruining their lives”.

The film including some “real experiences” of Dubliners against Seagulls is 16 minutes long and will be launched online on Friday 30th July.

There are events for children including the launch of a new children’s book called I Remember, written by Niamh Gleeson and beautifully illustrated by Ruth Ryan.

The author Niamh Gleeson will read from the book and the video will be also available to watch on the Five Lamps Arts Festival social media channels.

Another show for children, The Magic Box, will take place on 15th and 16th July at CHQ Buildings.

This is a unique puppet theatre technique that was born in Brazil by two art educators with the intention of creating an intimate experience to talk about important topics.

The Five Lamps Arts Festival 2021 is a dynamic and entertaining experience for all age groups.