Festival Tales

Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and working closely with the Young Foundation, Happy Days Enniskillen has launched a unique project to map the role of community volunteers in literary heritage.

The project ‘Festival Tales’ captures, records and celebrates stories and memories of local volunteers, artists, businesses and supporters involved in Enniskillen’s 10 years of world-class summer festivals and public art projects.

With hundreds of volunteers over 10 years (2012–22) having given their free time to the successful realisations of these stand-out international programmes so uniquely knitted into the civic, topographical and social landscape of Enniskillen and Fermanagh, the project is using story-telling techniques, research and workshops to catalogue the important role volunteers play in shaping their literary heritage.

Digging deep into an unearthed treasure trove of stories, conversations and experiences, our aim has been to capture the essence of Enniskillen’s literary heritage through its 10 years of carefully curated performative literary heritage programmes and the lessons learned to build on this going forward.

As an economist I am struck by the potential for literary heritage in Enniskillen. Building a literary heritage means keeping alive the anecdotes, stories and ‘peripheral’ heritage that the Happy Days programme has brought to Enniskillen. Capturing this powerful heritage is not only a differentiator for a place, it puts the spotlight on a culture of creativity which signals a dynamic place in so many exciting ways.

Professor Jim ColemanMember of the Board, Happy Days