4 Sharing good practice: the Finding A Voice Music Festival

As you learned at the beginning of this week, the Finding A Voice Music Festival was founded by sisters Róisín and Clíona Maher in 2017. Each year they present a festival celebrating music by women composers around International Women’s Day (8 March) in Clonmel, Co. Tipperary (ROI).

Activity 2

Watch the following interview with Róisín Maher, co-founder and director of Finding A Voice, discussing her work organising the festival.

Transcript (opens in new window)

Then consider the following questions:

  1. How has Róisín approached building an audience for women’s music in Clonmel?
  2. How has she secured funding for the festival?
  3. What is her approach to curating programmes?
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Discussion

  1. Róisín includes the following approaches:
    • including different musical genres on the festival programme
    • contextualising the music by inviting performers to talk to the audience, composer interviews, pre-concert talks and post-concert Q&As
    • partnering with local cultural providers.
  2. Róisín explains that the festival is supported by lots of diverse funding streams, including:
    • The Arts Council of Ireland
    • local county council arts funding (Tipperary County Council)
    • commercial sponsorship
    • support in kind from RTÉ (the Irish national television and radio broadcaster)
    • ticket sales.
  3. Róisín suggests the following:
    • including as many different genres as possible
    • trying to avoid creating an alternative canon of women composers
    • considering the extent of the performers’ experience performing women’s music
    • focusing on significant anniversaries (such as the Clara Schumann Bicentenary in 2019)
    • promoting the work of Irish women composers
    • ensuring that works by composers from different races and ethnicities are included.

OpenLearn - Women transforming classical music
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