Chic Destinations

Dublin Festival Season

The Irish capital, Dublin, is just 30 miles from Kildare Village and is fast becoming one of Europe’s most exciting cultural hubs. This autumn sees the very first Dublin Festival Season, a sort of coronation for a city completely in step with contemporary cultural happenings from both home and abroad.

The festival got off to a flying start with the Dublin Festival of Fashion and the Mountains to Sea book festival, both featuring fabulous line-ups. The next few weeks promise to be equally exciting, filled with world-class arts, theatre, dance and cultural celebrations, with events taking place throughout the rest of September and October, as listed below.

As Jan Morris wrote in her essay, Travels: ‘“Enjoy yourself now!’ everybody says in Dublin, and they mean enjoy yourself notwithstanding.” With such a variety of entertainment on offer during this festival season, it would be difficult to ignore this inspirational instruction.


Dublin Contemporary
More than 90 artists from across the globe come together in Dublin to exhibit a wide range of art works. Each work will explore the year’s theme of Terrible Beauty – Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of Non-Compliance, a topic part-borrowed from Irish poet W.B. Yeats’ staggering poem Easter, 1916.
www.dublincontemporary.com
6 September to 31 October

ABSOLUT Fringe
Dublin’s fringe festival will connect over 40 of the city’s special venues into a great web of theatre. Expect a dizzy display of over 500 inspirational and frequently far-from-conventional performances from dancers, artists, musicians and actors.
www.fringefest.com
10 to 25 September

Arthur’s Day
This year, Scissor Sisters, Stereophonics and Aloe Blacc will accompany a host of Irish music stars to celebrate the legacy of Arthur Guinness, the man behind one of Ireland’s most famous exports: the black stout known as Guinness.  
www.guinness.com
22 September

Oktoberfest
And if Arthur’s Day wasn’t enough, Dublin is also due to host a full-blown, 18-day celebration of Bavarian beer. It’s nowhere near as high-brow as the rest of the festivals, featuring as it does the best dressed Bavarian Strongman and Miss Oktoberfest Dublin competitions instead of literary or artistic talent, but it’s sure to be an enormous amount of fun.
www.oktoberfest-dublin.de
22 September to 9 October

Dublin Culture Night
Culture Night, when museums, galleries, and other cultural venues stay open late and invite the public through the doors for free, takes place in over 30 regions across Ireland. Dublin alone will host events in 156 different venues from august establishments such as Trinity College and the National Gallery to small artist studios and churches. It will include photography exhibitions, art installations, bookshop readings and a whole host of song and dance performances to tap along to.  
www.culturenight.ie
23 September

Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival
This is Europe’s oldest specialist theatre festival, featuring everything from passionate tragedy to brash comedy across Dublin’s many theatre spaces. Both the International and Irish programmes have featured big works written and performed by big names in the past, including Seamus Heaney, Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons.
www.dublintheatrefestival.com
29 September to 16 October

Hard Working Class Heroes
This indie music festival will feature a host of largely unknown Irish bands and musicians at 20 venues across the capital. An additional performance stage will pop up at various times and places across Dublin – you can follow its movements via the HWCH twitter page.
www.hwch.net
6 to 8 October

Open House Dublin
The Architecture of Change will explore the city’s buildings and architectural motifs through a series of free tours and talks, offering an inside look at the places usually closed to the public. In addition, to tie in with Dublin’s new status as a UNESCO City of Literature, the buildings’ literary connections will be examined in a series of unique events.
www.architecturefoundation.ie/openhouse/
7 to 9 October