The first Faoin Tuath festival took place in 2024 - a chance for queer people to connect beyond the city, featuring practical skill-sharing workshops, talks, live music performances, DJs, traditional music sessions, film screenings, shared meals, and much more
Branwen at Faoin Tuath Eoin Greally
LOOKING BACK AT OUR FIRST FAOIN TUATH
With Faoin Tuath we wanted to create something that we would love to go - a festival where people can come together to learn practical skills and spend time in nature but also get to socialise with other queer people, see amazing live musicians and performances in rural Ireland - where we live! It’s rare that you get an opportunity to do all those things together, let alone in the countryside.
Workshops in 2024 included Bat Box Building, a Wild Queer Workshop exploring the queerness in nature all around us in all its diverse, delicious & vibrant beauty through plant identification, wildlife tracking and ancestral crafting with Lucy O'Hagan of Wild Awake. Dan O'Connor took us on a whirlwind tour of all things organic growing and seed sovereignty, whilst Llewyn of Savage craic an a Queer Your Guts and Your Brew workshop exploring the fundamentals of flavour mixing, incorporate plant medicine, make kin and enjoy a queer mocktail made just for Faoin Tuath. Amir Abualrob, a Palestinian Theatre Maker, facilitator and performer based in Dublin and previous resident artist at Common Knowledge focuses on modern stories of connections, community and the power of art as resistance.
We had live music, performances and events from local singer, musician, composer, performance artist and puppeteer Branwen Kavanagh, a durational performance by Dylan Kerr, an Irish multidisciplinary artist based in Berlin, drawing on the embodied languages of ritual, protest and worship. 7of9’s Osaro and Lizzie lit up the night with their infusion of industrial pop with sulphuric-gore vocals seeping into our wanting earlobes. Finally our Queer Trad Sessions on Friday night with traditional tunes songs and ballads hosted by the Queer Sheds crew with Aoife Hammond and Steve Finnerty