Culture Night Limerick - Friday 18th September

zulutango

I'm surprised there isn't a discussion thread on this already.

In my opinion, it's one of the best evenings in the city in the year. There's so much going on and it's set up in such a way so that you can dip in and out of the many events that are happening throughout the city, and it's all for free.

Here's the programme - Culture Night Limerick 2015

VikingG

Well impressed with the amount that is on....

panda100

I LOVE culture night. It is one of my favourite nights of the year. It's great to see a good number of events taking place in the county as well as the city. Who knew Rathkeale had a community arts group?!

zulutango

I wonder if there is a possibility to hold something like Culture Night a few evenings in the year. I guess it costs a lot of money and take a fair bit of time to organise, but it would be a huge draw for tourists if there was a regular, scheduled event like it maybe once a month or something.

bazz26

For some unknown reason when I first read the title I read it as Culchie Night.

zulutango

Culchies and culture just don't go together.

Signed: a cosmopolitan, urban sophisticate

phog

I think Culture Night is a great idea and it's great to see so much of offer. On a similar theme on the weekend of 9th to 11th October is Open House so worth putting that in your diary too.

Red King

Caught the tail end of the opera performance in the Hunt museum. Wouldn't have ever really been my thing but I was absolutely gobsmacked by the performance.

Seriously thinking of going to a full show here now.

FelineOverLord

Why are Limerick events so badly advertised? I was in the city centre yesterday and Spin were handing out mini Subway sandwiches, I just assumed it was a PR thing for Subway, anyways, I saw nothing to suggest anything was happening in Limerick last night, other than a good natured charity v charity collection battle between LAW and another charity at the Milk Market last night.

Silentcorner

FelineOverLord wrote: »

Why are Limerick events so badly advertised? I was in the city centre yesterday and Spin were handing out mini Subway sandwiches, I just assumed it was a PR thing for Subway, anyways, I saw nothing to suggest anything was happening in Limerick last night, other than a good natured charity v charity collection battle between LAW and another charity at the Milk Market last night.

Not only has this been running for the last 8/9 years it was all over Limerick and National Media all week...why do people always complain about not knowing what is happening? Info was available in The Hunt/Library/St Marys Cathedral/Tourist office plus many more venues across the city over the last number of weeks...if you are into this type of thing you need to make some kind of an effort...it was all over my facebook feed all week...

Opera in The Hunt are the hottest tickets in town, I couldn't get in last night but I have done it before it an excellent experience, there was also some Opera in 4 Patricks St (home of Catherine Hayes, World renowned Soprano) which I also missed...but this is one of the best nights of the year, I really enjoyed last night...

Open House is on the 3 weeks...another excellent event/weekend...these are all excellent family activities free of charge and very interesting...get info now because some sites need to be pre booked...

FelineOverLord

Silentcorner wrote: »

Not only has this been running for the last 8/9 years it was all over Limerick and National Media all week...why do people always complain about not knowing what is happening? Info was available in The Hunt/Library/St Marys Cathedral/Tourist office plus many more venues across the city over the last number of weeks...if you are into this type of thing you need to make some kind of an effort...it was all over my facebook feed all week...

Opera in The Hunt are the hottest tickets in town, I couldn't get in last night but I have done it before it an excellent experience, there was also some Opera in 4 Patricks St (home of Catherine Hayes, World renowned Soprano) which I also missed...but this is one of the best nights of the year, I really enjoyed last night...

Open House is on the 3 weeks...another excellent event/weekend...these are all excellent family activities free of charge and very interesting...get info now because some sites need to be pre booked...

I don't live in Limerick so I wouldn't have seen, heard or read anything about it and I saw nothing in the city centre to indicate that anything was happening. Just because something is an annual event doesn't mean people will remember that it's happening or when it's happening. Seriously, there needs to be proper advertising of events in Limerick, not just stuff in the local papers or on locat radio...the lack of proper advertising is why people complain about not knowing what's happening.

Silentcorner

FelineOverLord wrote: »

I don't live in Limerick so I wouldn't have seen, heard or read anything about it and I saw nothing in the city centre to indicate that anything was happening. Just because something is an annual event doesn't mean people will remember that it's happening or when it's happening. Seriously, there needs to be proper advertising of events in Limerick, not just stuff in the local papers or on locat radio...the lack of proper advertising is why people complain about not knowing what's happening.

Just because people complain about lack of "proper" advertising doesn't mean they are right.

It was all over local media, national media, social media...I don't know what else they can do...these are free events...advertising costs a lot of money...and judging by the crowds that are turning out, 350,000 people across the country had no problem finding out what was happening...

Some people are just looking for a reason to complain, I suppose they'll never be disappointed!

FelineOverLord

Silentcorner wrote: »

Just because people complain about lack of "proper" advertising doesn't mean they are right.

It was all over local media, national media, social media...I don't know what else they can do...these are free events...advertising costs a lot of money...and judging by the crowds that are turning out, 350,000 people across the country had no problem finding out what was happening...

Some people are just looking for a reason to complain, I suppose they'll never be disappointed!

Why the attitude? I didn't know it was happening last night and I'd say many more people who didn't know it was on will be disappointed to hear that they didn't know it was happening either. No need to be a dick about it mate.

Silentcorner

FelineOverLord wrote: »

Why the attitude? I didn't know it was happening last night and I'd say many more people who didn't know it was on will be disappointed to hear that they didn't know it was happening either. No need to be a dick about it mate.

Well sorry, but you are the one complaining about a well organised well publicised event...it seems to me that people often use the lack of proper advertising as some kind of an excuse as to why they didn't know what goes on around the city...but it is not a legitimate excuse (there are some notable exceptions)...it takes very little effort to find out what is happening around the place...about the same kind of effort it takes to post on an online forum...

Red King

I don't think people are looking for a reason to complain. A fair few people I talked to today didn't know about the Opera thing at the Hunt museum and they would have loved to have seen it.

From the other point of view I am not sure what else they could have done to advertise as it was advertised on social media, newspapers and presumably the radio.

Maybe the specific events that were on could have been advertised more instead of using Culture Night as an unmbrella term for everything.

I don't know how feasable that would be though.

Anyway it was a great night, I'd love to see it become a more frequent thing. Like a Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter Culture Night.

pigtown

Red King wrote: »

I don't think people are looking for a reason to complain. A fair few people I talked to today didn't know about the Opera thing at the Hunt museum and they would have loved to have seen it.

From the other point of view I am not sure what else they could have done to advertise as it was advertised on social media, newspapers and presumably the radio.

Maybe the specific events that were on could have been advertised more instead of using Culture Night as an unmbrella term for everything.

I don't know how feasable that would be though.

Anyway it was a great night, I'd love to see it become a more frequent thing. Like a Spring/Summer/Autumn/Winter Culture Night.

That's true. I stayed at the Hunt Museum end of the city and felt that things like the Sailor's Home or the Frank McCourt Museum were that bit too far away to justify the time taken to get there. It was a great night though, and really busy.

phog

FelineOverLord wrote: »

I don't live in Limerick so I wouldn't have seen, heard or read anything about it and I saw nothing in the city centre to indicate that anything was happening. Just because something is an annual event doesn't mean people will remember that it's happening or when it's happening. Seriously, there needs to be proper advertising of events in Limerick, not just stuff in the local papers or on locat radio...the lack of proper advertising is why people complain about not knowing what's happening.

What in your view is proper advertising?

Culture Night is a national event. Of all the events held it's fairly easy to pick up a booklet or download a pdf document for the national and the local events.

iguana

Red King wrote: »

From the other point of view I am not sure what else they could have done to advertise as it was advertised on social media, newspapers and presumably the radio.

I'm saying this as someone who did know about the events in advance and had planned to attend the event in Castleconnell but it really was not advertised well at all. There was some social media but it's done badly and isn't reaching people well. It's not enough to just stick up a facebook page and do a couple of tweets. Effort has to be put into making sure the posts reach their intended audience and that just doesn't happen by itself. I mentioned it to a few people during the week and nobody I spoke to knew about it.

zulutango

From what I could see everything was fairly packed so whatever advertising they did do seems to have worked.

That said, I'd say a lot of people (myself included) just know that it's on because we've attended on previous years.

I got to Sarah Shine's opera performance in 4 Patrick Street, took a look around the Fab Lab on Rutland Street, headed over to St. Mary's Cathedral and climbed the tower to go to the bell ringing demonstration. Then went to the 'guitarchestra' performance in The City Library, and then managed to get the last seats at the Opera in the Hunt Museum.

It's so hard to pick a highlight from those. All excellent.

I'd echo the calls for this to be made a more regular thing. You could really put Limerick on the map by having a few of these a year. Take the money wasted on fireworks and other things at Riverfest and put it into a sustained 'cultural festivities' programme.

black & white

We went to King John's Castle and then the Frank McCourt museum, raging though I totally forgot to pop across to the Masons Lodge, always wanted to have a look at that. The castle was packed and there was a good few in Franks McCourts, restaurants were doing very well afterwards so hopefully everyone benefited.

mitresize5

The event at the Fairy Forest was great as well.

Lots of families with kids

panda100

There was such an amazing buzz around town on Friday night. I wish Limerick was like that every weekend.

My highlight was a street art tour of the island. I certainly saw a side of Limerick I would never even venture into. It was also really interesting to hear more about these interesting pieces that have been popping up over Limerick over the last few weeks. I think they look great!