featherheads & dreamers – an overview

The 22nd of April was a balmy, pleasant Friday evening. It was the kind of weather that might inspire one to meet with old friends, enjoy a glass of wine and perhaps recite a verse or two. For the folks here at The Model, we were preparing for just such an affair with wine destined to play a major role for the night in question. featherheads & dreamers a night of spoken word, performance and visual art kicked off in our theatre a 7pm.

Sound artist John Daly opened the event, treating us all to an immersive mixture of live guitar performance augmented with effects, delay, glitch and looping in combination with real-time field recordings. John even created a unique live work for featherheads & dreamers. It’s not often that you can bluster that an event has it’s own exclusive soundtrack, now is it?

Then our event curator and resident heartthrob, the esteemed Patrick Curley took to the stage. He delivered his opening remarks, and gave his audience an interesting insight into how featherheads & dreamerscame to fruition, with all the commanding stage presence and masculine grace you would expect from a well-seasoned actor. Mr. Curley envisioned the event as a representation of Ireland’s underground artists and poets in the shadow of the rising, a hundred years on. The inspiration for the event’s title came from the great diversity of both regional and local press coverage during the 1916 Rising. The message propounded was largely the same; the Rising was wrong-headed, irresponsible, unrepresentative and dangerous. The ‘Wicklow People” remarked that the Rising was committed by men who were no more than ‘featherheads & dreamers.’

The highlights of the night included but were not limited to:

• A hilarious overview of how “hidden channels”, Sligo’s only e-zine came in to being by Donal Adam’s, the art director behind the zine.

• Adam O’ Rouke’s performance of his series of his poems previously published in various literary journals including The Moth.

• A spoken word performance by award-winning poet, spoken word artist, and All Ireland Slam Champion Stephen Murphy.

• A powerful reading by writer and director Sorcha Fox.

• An exclusive reading of new material by “Pond’ author, Claire Louise Bennett.

• The cabernet sauvignon that Laura served in The Gallery Café.

The performances were engaging and thought provoking juxtaposed against a striking backdrop of visual art from David Fahey, James Kelly, Ciaran Og Arnold and Dominic Corrigan. The final act came courtesy from one of our very own, Teresa Galvin is a singer-songwriter based in Sligo who often finds spare time in her busy schedule to volunteer here in The Model. Teresa was accompanied by Fionnuala Kennedy on double bass and Stephanie Pawula on percussion. The Teresa Galvin trio delivered a riveting performance, heightening the sense of celebration that was carefully transplanted to Lillie’s wine bar once featherheads & dreamers bid all a goodnight.