The third iteration of Dublin City Council’s feminist arts festival ‘Brigit’ will be held this Bank Holiday weekend. It is only in the past year that the first Monday of February has been introduced as a public holiday in celebration of St Brigid’s Day, allowing locals and tourists alike the opportunity to explore a number of art events and exhibitions across the city. The festival isn’t limited to the public holiday itself, with celebrations running from St Brigid’s Day on Thursday the 1st.
The festival highlights traditional art forms, with workshops and demonstrations featuring historical crafts and trades such as foraging, felting, sculpting, and weaving. There are also opportunities for local artists and creatives to promote their own work; Richmond Barracks in Inchicore will be holding a two-day market on the 3rd and 4th, with stalls aiming to “showcase the talent of women in business”.
The Irish Museum of Modern Art is partnering with Feminist Art Making Histories to hold a roundtable discussion and lecture series with prominent art historians and archivists on Thursday. Feminist Art Making Histories is a project dedicated to archiving feminist artworks and curating the stories of women in the art world. This particular event will focus on the academic aspects of women’s historic and present-day roles in the arts.
The Festival peaks on Monday afternoon, with a “Celebrating Women” parade running through the city centre from half past four, with a subsequent concert at Abbey Presbyterian Church featuring musicians Rachael Lavelle and Soda Blonde.
Across the weekend, there are nods to the traditional iconography of St Brigid. On Sunday and Monday the Dublin Botanical Gardens are hosting two drop-in demonstrations on creating the Brigid’s Cross, the best-known image associated with her name. Visitors will learn how to make a traditional cross using fresh rushes, the traditional medium, and have the opportunity to make one of their own.
Traditionally, Brigid’s crosses are made on – or the night before – her feast day on the 1st of February, and hung over doors and windows for protection from various evil spirits. Like a number of other saints, she was associated with healing; people could use these crosses to protect themselves from disease as well as more supernatural fare. Communities might also celebrate the day by making a doll of Brigid and parading it around the village, with these parades typically led by young women.
Although Dublin City Council claims their festival is inspired by the Celtic goddess Brigit, the festival is organised around the bank holiday commemorating Saint Brigid’s feast day.
St Brigid is the patroness saint of Ireland, who shares many attributes with the goddess. The place name Kilbride, which appears all across Ireland, means “Church of Brigid ” after the saint. It is only since last year that St Brigid has been commemorated with an annual public holiday following a three-year campaign by Herstory, an Irish feminist storytelling platform. Herstory claims that Brigid, an Abbess and ordained bishop of the fifth century, was not only the “first recorded abortionist”, but also a lesbian, citing The Annals of Early Christian monks. Information on Brigid is limited, as the first accounts of her life only began to appear centuries after her death. It is hard even to prove that she was a real person, with this debate continuing to this day.
It has been suggested by scholars that over the centuries, the Christian Saint Brigid and the original Brigit of Irish mythology have been syncretized to form one larger-than-life woman. Either way, St Brigid has been claimed as a profound inspiration for modern Irish feminists. Traditionally associated with poetry and wisdom, she is the natural choice to figurehead this arts festival.
The events held this weekend range from the pensive, such as cemetery tours celebrating overlooked women from Irish history, to the whimsical, like a “make your own vulva” felting class. The sheer number and diversity of free experiences available to Dubliners over the Bank Holiday weekend makes “Brigit: Dublin City Celebrating Women” unmissable. The fact that these demonstrations and workshops are unapologetically feminist is just a bonus.
WORDS: Hazel Mulkeen
