The Birr Festival Season celebrates the essence of Birr Town each year. Each year from May to November Birr hosts no less than five festivals, including: Birr Festival of Music; Scripts – Ireland’s Playwriting Festival; Birr Vintage Week and Arts Festival; OFFline Film Festival; and, Hullabaloo – Offaly’s Children’s Arts Festival.
The festivals, separately and collectively, are essential to the social and economic wellbeing of the town, its hinterland and the wider region. To help ensure the festivals continued success Birr 20|20 Vision (with support from Offaly Local Development Company) commissioned a viability study in 2022 entitled, ‘Seeing The Beyond | Birr Festivals Planning for a Shared Future’. The key purpose of this report (prepared by Creative Strategic Solutions) was to produce a set of recommendations to support sustainable festival development in Birr into the future. While the reporting process provided an opportunity for each festival to highlight their own specific requirements, ambitions and priorities, it also advanced mechanisms whereby the festivals could grow collectively. The key finding of the report was probably identifying the possibilities that existed for all the Birr’s festivals to work collaboratively to address strategic goals in artistic development, audience engagement, and strengthening Birr’s position as an attractive and accessible cultural destination. And so, the Birr Festivals Collective was born as an association committed to taking a position of leadership through collective values, actions, and an ability to work cohesively and strategically. This collective approach is underpinned by a clear set of values, including:
Quality: A commitment to providing artists and audiences with high-quality experiences throughout their engagement with the festivals in Birr; this means fair remuneration for artists and contributors, a safe environment for artists, crew, staff, volunteers and audiences, and excellent production and presentation standards.
Sustainability: To lead by example in adopting and implementing principles of sustainability in how events are produced and promoted; and to avail of the benefits and economies of scale that are possible through planned collaboration.
Accessibility: A commitment to ensuring that as many people as possible can engage with, and benefit from, the festivals in Birr.
Inclusion: A commitment to designing and producing events in Birr in ways that extend a welcome to as many people as possible, particularly to those whose circumstances mean that they are infrequent attenders at festivals and events.
The Birr festivals, in adopting these shared collective values, are not only well positioned to continue in the future, but to flourish, providing opportunities in the process for the community of Birr to celebrate their shared identity and pride of place.
