Craft marketat Castlefarm

Castlefarm Craft market Friday 14^th of November from 4-8pm. Complementary mince pies and mulled wine will add to the Christmas spirit when the castlefarm yard turns into a christmas market. With customers buying direct from 15 producer stalls there will be lots of value. For those on their way home from work The Gallic Kitchen will have a hot pie stall at Castlefarm for the day.

Community Arts

For the last four years, an innovative arts and community development model has been implemented by Conor O’Leary in a number of counties around the country. The goal of the Rural Arts Network model has been to improve access and increase participation in the arts though the hosting of a sustainable programme of arts and cultural activities by locally based networks of volunteers. The formation of these networks is a response to the cultural disadvantage experienced by many regions throughout Ireland. In practice each network is made up of 5-8 villages or small towns and a committee of people is drawn together from this area and trained and empowered to promote arts and cultural events using community venues. Over 150 professional arts and cultural events have been organised by these volunteers ranging across all artforms and ages.

It dramatically puts the power back into communities to make decisions about arts and culture in their area. For the next two years it is hoped to develop new networks, create a support and mentoring structure for the networks which have been set up and for voluntary arts promoters, train others to develop and support these groups, lobby for innovative support for arts and cultural development in rural areas, encourage the networks to collaborate with artists and their communities in new ways and promote the arts network model to the arts and community sectors and on a wider level.