40 great late summer days and family-friendly events in Ireland, from Dublin Fringe Festival to Wild Atlantic Way

3 Aqua Park, Killaloe/Kilrush

Tickets from €18
Fancy clambering around on some huge inflatables and then jumping into the water? Then head to an aqua park. There is one on Lough Derg at Killaloe and another on the sea at Kilrush, both in Co Clare. They say it’s even better in the rain. Booking is essential.
westcoastaquapark.iehttps://westcoastaquapark.ie/

Sinéad O’Halloran, co-founder of the Ortus Chamber Music Festival in Co Cork

Co Cork

4 Ortus Chamber Music Festival

Various venues, September 3-5; tickets from €15
Tracton’s lovely arts centre in Minane Bridge — just a short spin from Carrigaline — the MTU Cork School of Music and Cloyne Cathedral are among venues for the Ortus Chamber Music Festival, with work by composers including Mozart, Brahms, Glière, Moari, Ben-Haim and Louise Farrenc. Founded by Mairéad Hickey and Sinéad O’Halloran in 2016, the festival “seeks to highlight the musical ability and innovation of young Irish musicians and composers while bridging connections with musicians around the world”.
ortusfestival.ie

5 Bosco’s Garden; Elizabeth Fort

August 15, 12.30pm and 3.30pm; tickets from €10
Bosco is neither boy nor girl but an eternal five-year-old who lives in a box — and is well prepared for a global pandemic! Paula Lambert, travelling the country for the past 42 years, brings Bosco’s Garden to the Everyman Outdoors at Elizabeth Fort for two shows on August 15.
everymancork.com

Co Dublin

6 Dublin Fringe Festival

Various venues and prices; September 11-26
Eleanora Salter and the Monster from the Sea is the intriguing title of a tale about a lonely lighthouse keeper who falls in love with a mysterious voice on her radio. Jane Madden and Clodagh Mooney Duggan’s production in Bewley’s Café Theatre from September 14-18 is one of many events at this year’s Dublin Fringe, which precedes October’s Dublin Theatre Festival. Fringe promises to “overrun the city with radical acts of joy, pleasure, beauty and wonder” over 16 delightful days in September.
fringefest.com

7 Family film festival

August 27-29; tickets from €6.50
Magic, memory, music and resilience are the themes of this year’s family film festival at the IFI in Dublin. It kicks off with the Amazing Amazon art workshop, followed by a screening of Ainbo. Then there are feature films, short films and workshops celebrating the return to cinema.
ifi.ie

8 Dublin Castle

Open daily; free
Entry to Dublin Castle is free until the end of 2021. Guided tours are cancelled — so the medieval undercroft and Chapel Royal are off limits — but visitors can see the state apartments on a self-guided tour. It’s open daily with last admissions at 5.15pm. Book at dublincastle.admit-one.eu or nab one of a limited number of tickets at the ticket desk.

9 Martin Parr’s Ireland: photographs 1979-2019, Gallery of Photography, Temple Bar

Until September 4; free
British photographer Martin Parr moved to Roscommon in the early 1980s and extensively documented the west of Ireland, but on return visits he recorded the transformation of Irish life, from its strict Catholicism to its technology boom. This exhibit showcases the best of his work over four decades.
galleryofphotography.ie

Co Galway

10 Outdoor currach trail, Inis Oirr

Until September 12; free
The timber and hide or canvas currach, which sustained Aran islanders for centuries, is the theme of Curacha, an exhibition to mark 21 years of Aras Eanna, Ireland’s most westerly arts centre on Inis Oirr. Dara McGee, artistic director of Aras Eanna, commissioned construction of 21 currachs, which were then given to artists to use as a canvas. The exhibition and outdoor trail includes interpretations by John Behan RHA, Inis Mor native Séan Ó Flaithearta, Inis Oirr resident Pat Quinn, Tom Meskell, Pakistani Mayo-based artist Sadia Shoaib, Kathleen Furey, Jay Murphy, Tim Acheson, Jennifer Cunningham, Dolores Lyne, Ger Sweeney and Mick O’Dea RHA, among others.
aras-eanna.ie/en/follow-the-currachs-around-inis-oirr

11 Laethanta Sona, Inis Oirr

August 30 to September 5; €30-35
Inis Oirr’s Creig an Staic is the outdoor venue for Laethana Sona, an Irish translation of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days by Mícheal Ó Chongaile, starring Bríd Ní Neachtain and Raymond Keane. Company SJ and the Abbey Theatre, Ireland are producing with Dublin Theatre Festival and Galway International Arts Festival.
giaf.ie

12 Aran Artists, Halla Ronain, Inis Mor

Until August 10
On the island of Inis Mor a recent head count confirmed that there are at least 14 resident artists — and that it was high time for them to collaborate. Painters, printmakers, mixed media artists and photographers — including Eoin McDonnell, Fionnuala Hernon O’Flaherty, Kevin O’Meara, Cyril Ó Flaithearta, Jill Connaughton, Leah Lane Whelan, Frances Beatty and Nonie O’Neill — are holding their first group exhibition in Cill Ronáin.
Instagram: @AranArtists

13 Galway International Arts Festival

August 28 to September 18
Derrygimlagh, south of Clifden, is best known as the location of the inaugural transatlantic wireless service established by Guglielmo Marconi on October 17, 1907. A plane crash 12 years later marked Alcock and Brown’s epic nonstop flight across the Atlantic. Now the blanket bog is the venue for the Mirror Pavilion by the Irish artist John Gerrard, depicting Leaf Work as a response to the escalating climate crisis. Not too many miles away in the Inagh Valley, a former salmon hatchery is the location for Broken Vessels, a collaboration between Irish artists Louise Manifold, Anne Marie Deacy and Noelle Gallagher and South African colleagues Christine Dixie, Lesego Rampolokeng and Monique Pelser.
giaf.ie

14 Clifden Arts Festival

September 15-23
Later in September Clifden is also the venue for Ireland’s oldest and perhaps one of its most courageous community arts festivals — it bravely staged a number of events last year in line with Covid-19 safeguards. Singer Iarla Ó Lionáird, Úna Monaghan and Kevin Murphy are among the artists on its programme, which is soon to be unveiled.
clifdenartsfestival.ie

15 Sruth na Teanga, Carnmore airport, Galway

September 1-18; from €10 for a child to €45 a family
One of the highlights of Galway 2020 before much of its live programme was pulled was Sruth na Teanga, a family-friendly “turas” through the Irish language by Branar Teatar do Pháistí. GIAF is hosting it again.
giaf.ie

16 The Seagull (after Chekhov), Coole Park, Gort

Until August 21 (and online September 5-12); tickets from €15
Druid Theatre’s interpretation of Thomas Kilroy’s The Seagull (after Chekhov) was sold out almost as soon as it was advertised. However, names are being taken for its waiting list and early bird tickets are on sale for its on-demand performances in early September. Well worth it given that Druid has released some of the most professional online productions during this pandemic.
druid.ie

17 The Playboy of the Western World, Coole Park, Gort

August 26-28; tickets €25
“Imagine if Bob Dylan was sitting at Pegeen’s bar . . .” That’s how producer Maria Moynihan-Lee describes a new twist on an Irish theatrical classic, JM Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World. Diarmuid de Faoite and Justin McCarthy reimagine it as a live radio show broadcast in 1959, narrated by Kate O’Toole. The cast of 15 includes a live band performing in a tent in the style of a 1950s theatrical fit-up.
playboythemusical.ie

18 Wildlands, Moycullen

Open Wednesday to Sunday; tickets from €10
This adventure park has fun for all the family with a long list of activities including archery, bushcraft and zip-lining. It’s laid out over 20 acres of woodland so there are plenty of walks too, while arts and crafts are on offer for the littlies (3-6 years). Grab a pizza from the Olive Kitchen on the grounds.
wildlands.ie

Co Kerry

19 A trip to the Skelligs, Portmagee

Daily (weather dependent); tours from €40
Combine a dose of heritage, adventure, boats and pop culture in one go with a trip to this Unesco world heritage site. The larger of the two islands is the site of an early Christian monastery where the monks ate puffin in their beehive huts, but now it’s most famous for being Luke Skywalker’s bolt hole in the most recent Star Wars movies.
skelligislands.com

Co Louth

20 Music Network

September 1-19; various venues; tickets from €12
Music Network casts its magic during September with a tour by the Gloaming vocalist Iarla Ó Lionáird, sound artist Úna Monaghan and cellist Kevin Murphy. They start in Roscommon Arts Centre on September 1, with Drogheda’s Droichead Arts Centre next on the itinerary on September 2. Limerick city, Castlebar in Co Mayo, Listowel in Co Kerry, the Clifden Arts Festival, Dublin, Belfast and Co Antrim are among the other venues on the Music Network route, which finishes up at Hawk’s Well Theatre in Sligo on September 19.
musicnetwork.ie

Co Mayo

21 Seeing Earth, Custom House Studios and Gallery, Westport

August 26 to September 19
“A flower aflame with the sun, a hint of a cetacean moving in the great ocean, fungus settling into new colour, haws gleaming on stalks” — the “taken for granted” is given the gift of “being seen” by artist Pauline Garavan in her new exhibition, Seeing Earth, which draws on the iconic image taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 from the Apollo 8 moon mission.
customhousestudios.ie

22 Sculpture at Westport Quay 2021

Mayo has what it describes as a “positive” recent history of large-scale sculpture projects, such as the Tir Saile trail in the north of the county. Westport Quay is the location for an exhibition of sculpture this summer, hosted by Custom House Studios and involving artists such as Donnacha Cahill, Eileen MacDonagh, Maeve Curley, John Gibbons, Paul Mosse and others.
customhousestudios.iehttps://www.customhousestudios.ie/

Dinosaurs Alive exhibition at the reopened Tayto Park

PHOTOCALL IRELAND

Co Meath

23 Tayto Park, Ashbourne

Tickets from €20
Tayto Park has reopened under Covid-19 guidelines, which means its impressive list of rides and activities for various ages are available again, from the Cú Chulainn rollercoaster — the largest one in Europe when it opened in 2015 — to the Viking Voyage splash ride. The junior zone contains activities for smaller tots and there’s a Nissan Driving School with miniature cars to teach kids the rules of the road. €35 full access, €31 for the junior zone only and children under two go free.
taytopark.ie

Co Sligo

24 Sligo Tread Softly

Until August 21
To the Waters and the Wild is the title of guided walks with archaeologists, mythologists and generally “knowledgeable folk” in various locations extending from Rosses Point to Knocknarea to Streedagh strand and Slish Wood as part of Sligo’s Tread Softly festival this month. Five artists take to the shoreline for Tidelines, while six more artists and the cave expert Dr Marion Dowd explore the caves of Kesh in the Bricklieve mountains. In Maugherow entire villages were engulfed in sand and this is recorded in a multimedia event curated by Seán Golden. There’s much more in the programme too, including a streaming today of WB Yeats’s On Baile’s Strand by the Blue Raincoat Ensemble.
treadsoftly.ie

Co Wicklow

25 Of a Mind, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray

Until August 15; tickets from €12
Mermaid Arts Centre has commissioned award-winning artists Listen and Breathe to capture the “changing spirit of our lives” in a guided “audio experience” designed for Bray’s promenade. You can use your own smartphone and headphones and a Zoom app once you book and gather at the Victorian bandstand for the 45-minute performance each evening, with matinees at weekends.
mermaidartscentre.ie

26 Masterclass, Mermaid Arts Centre, Bray

September 21; tickets from €15
Also at Mermaid, Masterclass promises both fun, familiarity and wigs in a parody of the “great male artist”, written by Feidlim Cannon, Gary Keegan and Adrienne Truscott.
mermaidartscentre.ie

Co Waterford

27 Spraoi Festival

Until August 29
The Baubo Company’s Cabinet of Curatrocities is the enticing title of one of the many events, from street theatre to performance and visual art, music and comedy, staged at Waterford’s annual Spraoi festival. If you’re quick off the mark today, you’ll catch Alice Bonazzi and Sara Marques of Damae Dance performing their premiere of IRMA-sister, a story of two women’s journey through conflict, performed in John Roberts Square at 5pm and 9pm. There’s lots more in the family-friendly programme.
spraoi.com

28 Waterford Walls 2021

August 13-22
Waterford Walls 2021 will involve 20 international and Irish street artists painting 24 walls across the city, and will bring mural artwork to Tramore, An Rinn, Ballyduff Upper and Tallow in the county. This year’s festival includes a mentorship programme and a Moving Murals app in collaboration with the Italian non-profit Bepart, the Brightening Air/Coiscéim Coiligh and the Arts Council.
thewallsproject.ie

29 Waterford Greenway

Free
Everyone who has done it raves about this 46km cycling/walking trail for good reason: it’s spectacular, situated along an old railway line between Waterford and Dungarvan with coastal views, viaducts, a tunnel and play areas.
visitwaterford.com

30 Waterford Harvest Festival

September 6-12, mostly free
Waterford Harvest Festival returns in its 12th year for seven days of dining-out experiences, seasonal food, producer collaborations and other culinary treats with a specific focus on food and drink from across the sunny southeast. Foodcations, including B&B stays in the region, can be organised too.
waterfordharvestfestival.ie https://www.waterfordharvestfestival.ie/

There are vaults to be explored, quizzes and games to play

Inspiring musems

1 Epic Irish Emigration, Dublin

This immersive and interactive museum looks at why about ten million people have emigrated from Ireland since the 1800s. There are vaults to be explored, quizzes and games to play. It’s history but not as we knew it.

Open daily. Kids go free in August when accompanied by an adult. Adults €16. Walk-ins are welcome.
epicchq.com

2 Fort Dunree, Co Donegal

Fort Dunree Military Museum outside Buncrana on the Inishowen peninsula has had a lockdown makeover. It now houses an exhibition covering the story of the fort perched on the edge of Lough Swilly, from prehistory to the arrival of the British. Get a taste of life at the fort and its vital role in coastal defence. And if the weather behaves, enjoy some impressive views.

Open daily. Adults €7, children/seniors €5, family €15.
dunree.pro.ie

3 Museum of Literature, Co Dublin

Little (and big) fans of the picturebook writer and illustrator Chris Haughton will be delighted with the Purple Squirrel exhibition curated by the popular children’s writer Sarah Webb. Kids can “walk through” Haughton’s classic story A Bit Lost while collecting souvenir animals.

Open daily. Adults €10, children €8, family €11.50.
moli.ie

4 Castlerea Railway Museum, Co Roscommon

How often can you get up close to an old Harry Potter-style locomotive? Not often enough. Rail enthusiast and museum owner Sean Browne has spent a lifetime buying up old rail memorabilia. There’s even a decommissioned 1955 A55 diesel locomotive. Browne says that kids love jumping into the driver’s seat.

Open by appointment; call 087 230 8152. Admission €5.
hellskitchenmuseum.com

5 The Hunt Museum, Co Limerick

When doors were closed this museum cleverly recreated some sculptures from its collection to display in its gardens. So don’t be surprised to see a 2m depiction of Olmec Man standing outside. The sculpture has its origins in the Olmec civilisation, the most ancient in Mesoamerica. Olmec Man is the first of seven supersize sculptures replicating artefacts from the Hunt to take up residence in the new Museum in a Garden. Indoors, the museum’s new A Wild Atlantic Way exhibition showcases the work of 30 Irish artists, from Samuel Lover’s The Kelp Burners (1835) to Donald Teskey’s Turn in the Weather (2016). There are also illustrated travel books by artists and travellers from the 19th century to today.

Open daily except Monday. Adults €7.50, children free (garden free). Book online.
huntmuseum.com

6 Irish Racehorse Experience, Co Kildare

And they’re off: the new €3.2 million Irish Racehorse Experience has opened at the National Stud and Gardens. Cutting-edge gaming technology that uses live video, audio and graphics means visitors can own, train and ride their own thoroughbred “racehorse”. The experience ends with a real-time race. Simulated but fun. Learn the history of Ireland’s thoroughbred industry too, from the first steeplechase in Cork to present-day Irish racing legends – equine and human.

Open daily. Adults €14, children €8, family €32.50. Tickets include entry to the National Stud and the Japanese Gardens. Entry to the Experience €5.
irishnationalstud.ie

7 Kerry County museum, Co Kerry

This museum in the centre of Tralee has upgraded its exhibition about Tom Crean, the explorer from Annascaul village, just 30 minutes away. Now there is even more to investigate as you follow the Kerryman and his fellow explorers on their way to the South Pole and as they survived the icy dangers and endured hardships.

Or step further back in time with the medieval experience, which recreates life in the county in 1450.

Open daily. Booking not required. Adults €5, children free, family €10.
kerrymuseum.ie

8 Cork Titanic centre, Co Cork

Walk in the footsteps of some of the unfortunate souls who set sail from Queenstown, now Cobh, to the New World in April 1912. Step on to the Titanic and enjoy life on board in third or first class, depending on your ticket – until disaster strikes. It’s a fascinating, sobering journey.

Booking required. Adult €11, children €7.50, family €25-€38.
titanicexperiencecobh.ie

9 Waterford Treasures, Co Waterford

Get three museums for the price of one in the heart of Ireland’s favourite Viking city: Waterford. The museums, which are all near each other, tell the story of the city from its foundation in AD914 by Vikings to the late 20th century. Reginald’s Tower, a stone tower, houses the Treasures of Viking Waterford. The Medieval Museum showcases that period. The elegant neoclassical Bishop’s Palace, built in 1743, focuses on the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.

There are also two new museums: the Museum of Time and the Silver Museum.

€10 per museum, children free. A Freedom ticket, which costs €15, includes admission to all five museums and a walking tour.
waterfordtreasures.comhttps://www.waterfordtreasures.com/_static_cache_handler.php/index.html

The array of photographs, documents and artefacts give an insight into the farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and others who worked the land

10 Country Life, Co Mayo

There’s lots to explore here, whether wandering through the old Venetian gothic house Turlough Hall or the purpose-built three-storey modern museum in the grounds. A new Titanic exhibition has opened to complement the permanent exhibition depicting life in Ireland between 1850 and 1950. The array of photographs, documents and artefacts give an insight into the farmers, fishermen, craftsmen and others who worked the land and the seas.

Open daily. Free, but booking online is essential.
museum.ie/en-ie/museums/country-life