Easter Parade Call for Interest - Funding Available for Community Groups

The Mortal Orchestra at the 2009 Easter Arts Festival

The Samhlaiocht Easter Arts Festival, which is this year celebrating 18 years of bringing the Arts to the streets of Tralee, has issued a call for entries for its upcoming Easter Arts Festival Parade.

The Samhlaiocht Easter Arts parade is always a wonderfully lively and colourful event featuring over twenty groups from all over the county as well as samba bands, other professional street artists and on one memorable occasion a host of bikini clad Brazilians!

"The parade is always one of our most vibrant events," said Jason O' Mahony, Director of Samhlaiocht. "The streets of Tralee come alive, full of colourful characters, colourful costumes and with a real festival atmosphere. You need only watch the parade to realise the spirit of the Arts is very much alive in Kerry."

This year the theme of the Samhlaiocht Easter Arts Festival is 'Legends' and the Festival will feature all aspects of the Arts from music, tradition, craft, culture, food and film to literature, with a special emphasis on street theatre and children arts.

The Parade will take place on Sunday, April 4th at approximately 7.30pm and groups that are interested are encouraged to get in touch with Samhlaiocht and fill out an application form.

"We've had a fantastically high calibre of community groups taking part in previous years," added Jason, "and the interest has been huge even at this early stage, so I'd really encourage interested groups to get in touch as quickly as possible. We'll finish the parade this year with a spectacular fire-work display and I bet that all the communities that take part will set off fire-works in their own right!"

There two types of funding available including funding for the Kerry Group Five Community Project. Five groups will be selected from among the applicants. Each group will receive funding of 1000 euro to provide artists fees, prop building, costumes and transport.

Funding is also available for Participant Groups. All kinds of groups from play schools to active retired groups are welcome to apply. The groups will each receive funding to assist towards expenses incurred.

"We hope that this can be the biggest year ever," added Jason. "We're delighted that Kerry Group which has supported Samhlaiocht since its inception is on board. Quite literally without their ongoing support the festival would cease to exist. The feedback from the participating groups is always wonderful and the financial support of Kerry Group makes it possible."

Application forms for both streams of funding are available online at www.samhlaiocht.com Forms are also available for the Samhlaiocht offices in the Old Presbytery on Lower Castle Street in the Heart of Tralee. For More Information please contact Trish Thompson of Samhlaiocht on 066 712 9934, by email on trish@samhlaiocht.com , or by simply calling into the office.