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GLÓR has come out to show support for the National Arts Recovery Plan and are asking the people of Clare to help give a voice to the arts to ensure its survival from the effects of Covid-19. Theatres and arts centres across the country are backing the plan published last week by the National Campaign for the Arts (NCFA). Orla Flanagan, director of the Ennis arts centre says, “All at glór stand together with the NCFA, venues around Ireland and our artists and arts workers at this difficult time to ensure the survival of our sector.” She explains, “Before and during this pandemic, it is the arts that have kept us company, been an escape, a voice, a release, a hope. As the country emerges from the pandemic and businesses attempt to return to trading or pivot to alternative offerings in a physically limited new world, the arts and culture sector will be the very last to recover in any …

DRAMA was kept to a minimum when members of Clare County Council gathered at Glór in Ennis for their first full meeting since the lockdown. The state-of-the art auditorium, which has capacity for 485, enabled the attendance of councillors, media and the general public, while also ensuring social distancing. “It’s great to see you all,” said CEO Pat Dowling. “We’ve missed you – a little.” Monday’s meeting coincided with the first day of Phase Two of the road map for the re-opening of Ireland and provided an opportunity for local authority members to assess the impact to-date of Covid-19 on Clare, and to consider the actions needed and the choices to be made to turn the county’s fortunes around. Any councillor considering making a song and dance, in a venue more accustomed to theatrical performances than political ones, would have been dissuaded by the CEO’s sombre account of the economic impact of the coronavirus. Outlining the additional expenditure of €500,000, …

A COUNCILLOR, who is still suffering from a severe bout of Covid-19, has proposed that their next council meeting should only last two hours in view of public health guidance. Clare County Council will hold its June meeting in Glór to comply with social distance guidelines instead of its normal venue at council headquarters. Councillor Ann Norton believes councillors need to make the necessary changes to standing orders to limit their statutory meetings to two hours as a precautionary safety measure. “We need to be cautious and ensure whatever can be done is done. I wouldn’t like to see anyone getting the virus. “I didn’t know I had Covid-19 so how can one of my colleagues know they had virus unless they were tested and told and then they will be in quarantine. “People don’t realise they have the virus. A number of people who had the virus weren’t tested because it was so mild but they could still pass …

ITS doors may be closed, but glór has been doing its bit to meet the challenges of Covid-19 by bringing people together – from the safety of their own homes. Director of the Ennis arts venue Orla Flanagan believes that shared experiences are an important way of bringing light into these uncertain times. With that in mind, the venue has launched glór sa Bhaile a new series of premier performances, bringing Clare’s finest artists direct from their homes to yours every Thursday evening at 8pm. Steo Wall and Jacinta Sheerin have already featured live from their home in Ennistymon with Katie Theasby set to feature this week. Orla explains, “We wanted to create something unique to glór, where essentially by providing this platform for artists, we could pay them and support them in this particularly challenging time, whilst also importantly connecting with our great and loyal audiences in Clare and beyond, to promote the wonderful talent we have on our …

MOUNTSHANNON Arts Festival is getting set to celebrate its 24th year, with an exciting programme for 2020. While the main festival take place from May 23 to June 1, organisers aim to have events running over the course of the year. Next month, for the first time ever, one of the key performances will take place later this month (March) at Glór in Ennis, as renowned pianist Alexander Ardakov makes a welcome return to Clare. Mr Ardakov, who lives in London, hails for the Volga region of Russia and as well as being an acclaimed musician is a Professor of Piano at a leading conservatoire. He played to a capacity audience in Mountshannon in 2019. The hope is that, by collaborating with Glór for a performance on March 28 – which is World Piano Day – people from across the region will get to hear him play. Roxanne Leonard who is a member of the Arts Festival committee had known …

WHEN Wicklow playwright and actor Rose Henderson’s father was stricken by Alzheimer’s in his latter years, it meant a lot of challenges for her family, particularly her also ageing mother. She has mined the experience of her father’s last 15 years for the play Take Off Your Cornflakes, which she co-wrote with Fair City star Pat Nolan, and the two will also star in it at glór on February 21. An undeniably serious and sad theme, she says the play is also quite funny, and that humour is one of the best coping strategies for coping with something so devastating. “It as a horrendous thing to hit our family, the repercussions were just exhausting. He was a great Dad, very bright, he was an engineer and his memory had been his friend really. He just didn’t get it, that he wasn’t remembering things, even sequences. He’d look at the kettle and wondering how do you turn that on, is there …

JUST outside Ennis on a dark and stormy night three 30-somethings,Barry, Cusack and Pa, gather again for the anniversary of their childhood friend Liam, who was killed in a road accident when they were 17. This is the premise for Clarecastle playwright John O’Donovan’s Flights and one of its major themes is the ongoing impact of the recession on men in their 30s. Like thousands of others, John left Ireland in 2009, with his hopes of teaching here ruined by the crippled economy. Speaking about Flights, he says, “They get together every year on the anniversary of their friend, who died when they were 17. He’s been 17 years dead this year, so it’s at that weird point when someone you know is dead as long as they were alive. They’re in their mid-30s and it’s usually a bigger party but as people have moved away and drifted away, it’s gotten very small. They have their own issues as well. …

WHEN Caroline Lynch from Quin married lively Dubliner Chris Byrne on June 28, 2013, building a dream home in the Banner County was always part of their plan. The Ringsend native was “larger than life”, says Caroline, and made a big impression on her native village. He found common ground with everyone he met and always had a friendly word. When we’d go out to the pub in Quin, everyone was like: ‘There’s Chris,’ whereas they hardly noticed me and I’m the native!” she smiles. While this year, Caroline is fulfilling the dream of raising her family in Clare, she’ll be doing it without her soul-mate, after losing Chris to an aggressive form of brain cancer in the Spring of 2016. Now, her rocks of support are her parents Ann and Des, her five-year-old son Harry, and a wide circle of relatives and friends. But she admits that the void left by Chris’s death has left her feeling “robbed” of …