Governance

Listowel Writers’ Week is committed to the following principles and values:

• Creating opportunities for art to operate as a dynamic and meaningful social entity.
• Challenging understandings of how literature can be experienced in an Irish rural idiom.
• Programming artists who challenge dominant socio-cultural agendas.
• Sustaining participatory and indigenous practices.
• Providing open and inclusive spaces that are accessible to all irrespective of age, ethnicity, gender expression, socio-economic background, neurodiversity, health, sexuality, ability, or religion.
• Sharing the creative process with the resident and working communities of Listowel town and beyond.
• Connecting artists with community members, fellow researchers, and the wider arts sector.

Sharing the Arts Council’s belief that ‘every person living in Ireland has the right to create, engage with, enjoy, and participate in the arts’ (EHRD Policy & Strategy, 2019), we are dedicated to reaching communities that have no definable relationship with literature.

Accessibility is something we are taking very seriously, and it was reflected in our 2024 festival. We are enormously proud that we were, again, able to offer free parking during our 2024 festival to our visitors. Our venues were selected for being wheelchair accessible, offering disabled toilets and parking. We included a new section on our website where people can call …. to enquire about access, help and general information. Festival in a van was an outreach activity with enormous success, where music and poems were not only performed in the Square of Listowel to the public but also to residents in three care homes in Listowel. Emerging writers were promoted daily with book launches.

Some of our artists this year reflected the diverse society we live in:

• Gustav Parker Hibbett, Jane Clarke (LBGQ+)
• Oein de Bharduin (Traveller)
• Sofia Andrukhovych, Halyna Budilova, Olesia Morhunets-Isaienko (Ukranian)
• Leon Diop, Briana Fitzsimmons (Black Irish)
• Karl Browne’s Snizzly Snout event for visually impaired children
• Pat Sheedy (former prisoner)
• Catriona Ni Chleirchin and Laoighseach Ni Choistealbha, Matt Mooneys Cuirt Filochta event (Irish speaking)
• Barbara Scully, Orla Doger and Val Troy event dealing with life in the post-menopausal years

Listowel Writers’ Week provides a creative and entertaining festival that inspires its participants and, by encouraging engagement in the arts, enriches cultural life locally, nationally and internationally.

The main tenets of our artistic policy are as follows;

* Promote access to works of literary excellence in the various genres of writing to diverse audiences whist ensuring value for money within budgetary constraints.

* Curate a spread of art forms to engage and entertain. Sub-committees discuss how literature, art, theatre, film, drama, music and poetry fit into our programme, and these can be developed in order to support the framework of engagement and development of our audiences.

* Provide a forum for emerging, established, mid-career, senior, significant or honorific artists to include local, national and international artists.

* Enable writers to advance their skills and develop their careers with forums for meeting other writers, publishers and writers’ agents etc.

* Guarantee that artists are always fairly and equitably remunerated.

* Ensure gender balance and social diversity across the programme of events.

* Encourage an outlet for artists from groups that are at risk of discrimination or exclusion and support artists from a diverse range of communities.

* Welcome and embrace different ideas on presentation and context.

* Evaluate artists’ suitability for participation and inclusion in the programme of events to enhance and achieve the KPI’s of our audience development strategy.

* Enable the creative processes of writing through literary workshops for children and adults delivered by reputable and professional facilitators.

* Engage with school children and young adults. Our family and school events programme which runs over four days, covers the age group from birth to 12-13year olds. It is fully inclusive, offers disabled access and events specifically programmed to ensure inclusion and cultural diversity across the festival.

In addition, and under the same premise, we run a day long festival for young adults, 13-15+ year olds – Young Adult Book Festival, also known as YA Book Fest.

* Develop partnerships with strategic partners, local authorities, organisations, community, government authorities and other stakeholders thus facilitating evidence-based decision making for the purposes of future planning and curation of the festival including professional development of volunteers.

* Consult with attendees, strategic partners, stakeholders, community and local authorities each year with a desired outcome of monitoring and evaluating the demographics to ascertain what steps are necessary to further increase our audiences, deepen our relationship with our audiences and diversify to become more inclusive in terms of audience development and public engagement.

* Host multi-disciplinary arts events during the year to engage with the local community.

Listowel Writers’ Week remains committed to being an inclusive and welcoming festival that willingly and enthusiastically collaborates with artists, arts organisations, communities, government authorities, and other stakeholders in pursuit of the mutual goals of Making Great Art Work.

Listowel Writers’ Week Child Protection & Welfare Policy document can be viewed here.