Bealtaine

May belongs to the Bealtaine festival, celebrating creativity in older age! An estimated 57,000 people now take part in the Bealtaine festival, making it one of Ireland’s biggest arts festivals. From dance to cinema, painting to theatre, Bealtaine showcases the talents and creativity of both first-time and professional older artists.

It is a chance for people to make new and challenging work, a chance to communicate traditions between the generations. It is a chance for the novice to discover a talent until then unseen and a chance for a long-dormant skill to find a new outlet.

Each year, Age & Opportunity invites local authorities, arts centres, libraries, Active Retirement groups, care settings, community groups and clubs, associations from every part of the country to run Bealtaine events that celebrate creativity in older age.

This year, we had over 400 organisers. We devise a theme to get people thinking and we produce the Bealtaine Bulletin, which lists events and showcases the diverse range of activities taking place and is available from the Bealtaine festival website.

As well as that, Age & Opportunity instigates or supports a number of events each year that are trying something new. Examples in the past have been bringing Liz Lerman Dance Exchange to Ireland for workshops and performances, nurturing the performance piece Silver Stars to a full production (which has gone on to sell out performances in the Dublin Theatre Festival and has moved to New York's off Broadway festival, Under the Radar) or EnvisAge, a creative project that attempts to re-imagine care settings for older people in a whole new way.

Bealtaine is an Age & Opportunity initiative part-funded by the Arts Council and delivered by hundreds of organisations around the country. Dublin City Council and RTÉ are also investment partners. In 2009, we published a major independent evaluation of the Bealtaine festival by the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology, National University of Ireland, Galway. You can find out more about the Bealtine evaluation here.