Tag Archives: Sarah Clancy

CLARE will hold its first ever Pride festival over the course of a weekend later this month. It will kick off on Culture Night, Friday, September 23, with ‘‘Queering the Green’, a queer poetry book launch and reading at Mna ag Gaire (Ennis Women’s Shed) in Ennis. The reading will feature three of Ireland’s leading queer poets, Liz Quirke, Simon Costello and Clare’s own Sarah Clancy.  The following day  the show will go on with an LGBTQI+ youth event in Shannon including dance workshops and drag bingo. This will be followed by the grand weekend finale –  a no-holds-barred over 18s party featuring drag queen and kings and DJs at the Oakwood Hotel in Shannon.  As well as being a celebrated poet, Sarah is one of the organisers of Clare Pride, and speaking about it this week, she said, “We have a few events on, it’s small and contained, we’re not having a week long festival. “We have three different …

LAHINCH author and activist Ruairí McKiernan, South African activist and Knockalisheen Direct Provision centre resident Bulelani Mfaco, and Bellharbour poet and activist Sarah Clancy are to help lead a major event honouring legendary South African humanitarian and anti-apartheid campaigner Desmond Tutu, who passed away last Sunday at the age of 90. The event, which takes place online on Thursday (December 30), is being organised by Afri, an Irish peace and human rights organisation. Archbishop Tutu was the organisation’s patron for almost thirty years, after it hosted his first visit to Ireland 1984. Since then, Afri hosted the revered human rights leader several times, including in 1991 when he led the annual Afri famine walk in Doolough, County Mayo. Afri helped lead the Irish campaign against apartheid and arranged for the Dunnes Stores strikers, who refused to handle South African fruit, to meet Tutu in London while on his way to collect the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. This meeting famously helped internationalise the campaign against …

HISTORY will be made in the Banner this month when the first ever county-wide Clare Pride Festival takes place during the October Bank Holiday weekend, writes Fiona McGarry. A day of free events in towns across Clare on Sunday, October 24, organised by Quare Clare, will culminate in a fantastic Pride Party in Hotel Doolin with cabaret, DJ and finger food. One of the Quare Clare organisers, Sarah Clancy, who works for Clare PPN and is herself a member of the LGBTQ+ community. “This is going to be a fantastic weekend for Clare’s LGBTQ+ community and for people who we hope will travel from around Ireland to be with us this weekend,” she said. “We want our community to be visible and connected to the wider community in Clare. We want young and older people in the towns and villages around Ireland to see how rural Ireland too can embrace difference.” “What better way for us to connect and celebrate …

A JOINT application to set up a Traveller support initiative has been successful, Clare Local Development Company (CLDC) has announced. The collaborative application on behalf of CLDC, Clare Women’s Network, Clare Public Participation Network (PPN) and the HSE’s Mid-West Traveller Health Unit has been endorsed by several other community and voluntary organisations around the county. The monies will now be provided by Department of Rural and Community Development’s Pilot Project Community Development Fund. More than 120 projects around the country applied for this funding and the Clare collaborative group are delighted to have been one of only seven successful applications to the one million euro fund. Doirin Graham, CEO of Clare Local Development Company welcomed the news saying that this much needed funding would secure a Traveller specific initiative. “We want to ensure that Travellers are involved at every level of this project and are front and centre in the decision making roles,” she said. “With our organisations’ support we …

THE full programme for the 15th Ennis Book Club Festival was announced this week. This year’s festival will be a hybrid of online events in March with live events taking place in April and September. As always Ennis Book Club Festival 2021 will offer opportunities to engage with favourite authors and features an additional programme of events for younger readers. While the festival cannot welcome book lovers to Ennis this March as ever, it will provide plenty of events to stimulate discussion and inspire reading, from the comfort of the couch. Commenting on the programme for the 2021 Ennis Book Club Festival, Artistic Director Dani Gill, says, “We have had to re-imagine the festival several times this year with the changing circumstances, and while people are having to remain at home, we hope that at least, there have been some good books on the go, and that people will engage with our online offerings next month. “A lot of work …

A NEW ‘proclamation’ for County Clare is being drawn up as a blueprint for this and future generations of Banner residents. Ideas are currently being sought to feed into the plan which covers all aspects of life in the county. The Public Participation Network (PPN) which is an umbrella organisation representing a range of community, voluntary, social inclusion and environmental groups, is preparing the vision document, which will be tailored to each of the county’s four municipal districts. To gather views on what improvements people would like to see in a range of areas, including social and community development, governance, the environment and the economy, the PPN is circulating a survey on its website and other platforms. The survey asks people what kind of county they would like to live in and to outline what their local area needs to make it the best it can be for this and future generations. “We are excited to be undertaking this important …