Culture Night 2025

Culture Night 2025.

The Old School in Garbally, perhaps better known latterly to many as the Hall or Skehana Community Centre, has been delivering lessons and teachings in one form or another since 1881 and on Friday night, September 19th 2025 to celebrate Culture Night 2025, it again served to teach us what we really knew already but had, with the passing of time and modern media, maybe lost sight of – you simply cannot surpass local people presenting their many and varied talents in a live performance among fellow locals and families in a rural setting.

Our presentation was just one of 1700 held across 32 counties which was coordinated professionally and efficiently by our master of ceremonies Paddy Curley and our sound engineer Emmet Greaney as they transitioned between eight different performances that involved close to sixty participants from the very young to the young at heart! Opening the event were two of our younger performers Oisín and Caoimhe Dolan from Brierfield and they set the tone for an enthralling evening to be followed by mother and daughter duo, Ellen and Norrie Keane, siblings Emily and Emmet Greaney and regular local performer Carmel Costello. Following a brief interval to allow for set-up we had the Abbey set dancers on stage, daughter and father combination of Áine and Michael Connolly, our own past Chairperson, Seán Conneely, who hardly left a dry eye in the house with his rendition of James Young’s classic monologue, I loved a Papish, where love conquered division and bigotry in the north of our island. And so it was to the final performances by the Skehana Folk choir, introduced in our native tongue by Sinead Thompson and under the musical direction of Mary Mellody.

Immediately prior to the singing of Amhrán na bhFiann MC Paddy Curley conveyed the gratitude of the Skehana & District Heritage Group to all the performers, the audience, our sponsors at the Arts Office at Galway County Council, sound engineer Emmet Greaney, the Skehana Community Centre committee for hosting the occasion and to all other volunteers who assisted in every possible way. When asked to volunteer not a single individual or group said ‘no’ and this is a great statement from any community. He also emphasised that the future of our cultural heritage is in safe hands with the amount of young talent on show on the night. Funds received from an Arts Office grant will be distributed in its entirety to the Community Centre and towards nurturing our cultural heritage among younger members from Skehana and surrounding districts. Our own group has funded all other expenses associated with the night’s events.

Skehana Community Centre is actually the townland of Esker and how fitting it is that on Tuesday September 23rd 2025 it will be the setting for the opening of the annual Fit-Up Theatre Festival while in past times it was also the site of the travelling roadshows. The wheel keeps turning.

Light refreshments were served afterwards which created a nice social setting as the curtain came down on Culture Night 2025. Thanks to all.