darren mccreesh, artistic director of THE PATRICK KAVANAGH CENTRE

Background and collaboration with SoFFt Productions:

We have collaborated for three editions of the Kavanagh Weekend. My role is the Artistic Director and also the manager of the Patrick Kavanagh Centre. I approached Natasha initially because I liked the cut of the SoFFt jib. I was very impressed by the innovation and creativity demonstrated in event production and felt that SoFFt were at the leading edge of that. And that's the kind of partnership I wanted to have with a production company. A company that can basically deliver exceptional high quality productions to scale, but also provided a certain amount of curatorial and creative thinking around the delivery of the festival and around the programming of it. So it's not just as simply a case of turning up and lighting and the managing of the sound that there is a much more holistic kind of approach to festival making. I felt that that's kind of what SoFFt are great at. 

I think The Thinning Veil event was the clincher for me in terms of wanting to work with the team. That was key for myself. We've successfully developed a strong working relationship over the three years and the festival has evolved beautifully from the first edition right through to today. We also do it in a sustainable way. 

The aim of the project is to deliver high quality arts experiences for audiences in the Northeast via The Kavanagh Weekend platform.

How is the experience of working with SoFFt? 

What stands out for me is, I don't have to stress about this stuff anymore.
It gets delivered. I don't have to worry about it. And the audiences don't have to worry about it. Everybody gets a chance to experience the art, the performance, the event, they're not looking at the way things are set up. They're not looking at the lighting, the sound, they're not thinking of any of that because all of that is done to such a high quality. That's key.
SoFFt provides the context within which artists can get the best possible artistic experience, the audiences can get the best possible event experience or participatory experience. It's seamless. And it's right from the start, from opening at seven o'clock on the Friday right through to the last event on the Sunday evening. It doesn't stop. That's throughout the village and it's throughout multiple venues and it's within the context of street activities as well. So the excellence doesn't really dip, the quality doesn't dip, and that is crucial.

SoFFt’s contribution

It was all in. Very much, from having the creative conversations around the artistic direction to when it came to street spectacle and public kind of happenerings, we had a lot of strong creative conversations around that, but also a very, very singular, very creative approach to delivering events throughout the village in terms of lighting and the design. All of these things have added to Kavanagh Weekend immeasurably to deliver on the ambition of the programming. That has been very useful in terms of supporting engagement with the community and demonstrating to the community that this is a very significant festival. Those coming to visit Inniskeen during the festival, that they get a feeling that this could be Galway, Dublin, it might be in a village context, but that there's still a quality in terms of the cut and it's to a very, very high standard. 

What specific aspects of the work were memorable?

I think having those creative conversations in advance of the festival. You know, they can be very enjoyable. But I think the delivery of the street procession year on year has just grown and grown and grown and certainly from a very modest, but beautiful first edition to the current way we deliver it, there's been a huge amount of growth there and it has become a proper spectacle.  I feel that the collaboration between the Kavanagh Centre, the County Council and the artists is really catalysed by SoFFt’s involvement. They help us all become better than the sum of our parts in the delivery of the street parade. So I think that is probably the most impactful in terms of what's visible and what's helping to redefine the Kavanagh weekend because the street procession also allows us to build in a lot of diversity. It allows us to develop our audiences and to support our local artists and local culture to shine on a bigger surface stage. There is a bit of an ecosystem developing around the street performance, with various workshops across different community groups. So all of this is possible because of the vision of SoFFt Productions.