Cycles

Cycles is an arts participation project created by Carlow Arts Festival that has been taking place across Hacketstown, Rathvilly, Graiguecullen and Tullow, exploring language, history, landscape and cycling led by artists Michelle Browne and Eszter Némethi. We have been looking back 100 years to 1923 and imagining our future in 2123 through a series of workshops, talks and discussions.

As a culmination of this project, a large-scale collective cycling experience took place on the 14th of July, 2024.

The collective cycling experience was an 18km and 3km loop with an audio piece that shaped people’s experience of the cycle with some other surprises along the way. As the cyclists returned to Ducketts Grove, Carlow Community Choir sang a special song created by Carlow musicians Ye Vagabonds (Brían & Diarmuid Mac Gloinn) for this project inspired by the texts created during the workshops.

Spokes, as part of Cycles, was a series of discussions and workshops about our sense of place within County Carlow that took place during our festival in 2023. Spokes hosted conversations on language, cycling, ecology and more.

Cycles Screening & Performance

On the 27th of November 2024, we held a special screening of two video works and a performance by Carlow Community Choir.

Renowned filmmaker, Ros Kavanagh, working closely with Michelle Browne, created a beautiful film work that captures the experience of the collective cycle on the 14th of July, 2024 that began and ended at Ducketts Grove. This mesmerising film included the special audio experience that was developed from texts written by the community groups during the series of Cycles workshops.

Patrick Bramley of ULAB Studio followed the Cycles project from its beginnings to the final collective cycling event in July 2024. He created a short documentary revealing the behind-the-scenes process of developing this project.

After the screening, Carlow Community Choir and the audience, led by Mary Amond O’Brien, sang Follow the Crows - a song written especially for this project.

Images by Brian Cregan, Patrick Bramley, Allen Kiely & Michael O'Rourke

Cycles is part of ART:2023, a Decade of Centenaries programme, presented by The Arts Council | An Chomhairle Ealaíon in association with the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. This project has been supported by Carlow Sports Partnership, Sport Ireland via the Dormant Accounts Fund, Creative Ireland Carlow, Carlow Arts Office, Carlow County Development Partnership and Healthy Ireland.

This project was developed in partnership with County Carlow Sports Partnership, Carlow County Library, Carlow County Museum, Carlow Road Cycling Club, Carlow County Council and Carlow An Garda Síochána.