Galway International Arts Festival 2018 | The Highlights

The 41st Galway International Arts Festival came to a close on Sunday 29th July 2018 following its biggest Festival to date. 252,748 attended over 200 events across the 14 days, while 145,000 people passed through the inaugural Festival Garden, making it the biggest Festival yet. See www.giaf.ie/

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Over 600 participating artists enthralled audiences attending performances, talks, concerts, street events and exhibitions. Attendance was up by 20% on 2017 and early estimates suggest that the two-week event will have an economic impact of at least €29.5 million.

In what was a new and very welcome development at this year’s Festival, 145,000 flocked to the new Festival Garden on Eyre Square. The Garden was a huge hit with locals, visitors and young and old alike who enjoyed al-fresco dining with delicious food as well as occasional pop-up performances with guest artists.

Rave reviews flooded in for the world premiere of the Festival’s production of Incantata by Paul Muldoon, co-produced with Jen Coppinger. Described as ‘a remarkable piece of theatre’ (The Irish Examiner) and ‘visually stunning’ (The Guardian), Stanley Townsend’s outstanding performance was lauded as ‘electrifying’ (The Sunday Independent) and ‘compelling’ (The Guardian).

Thousands of visitors from Ireland and across the world travelled to Galway to take part in the Festival. In 2017, 37% of the Festival’s visitors were from outside of Ireland with 18% visiting from around Ireland and 45% from Galway.

Galway International Arts Festival would like to acknowledge the support of its principal funding agencies the Arts Council and Fáilte Ireland, Leadership Partner Ulster Bank, Drinks Partner Heineken and Education Partner NUI Galway.

GIAF 2018 – An Overview

252,748 attendances across 200 events in 32 venues
145,000 visited the inaugural Festival Garden in Eyre square
Over 600 artists participated in the Festival
620 volunteers supported the Festival team and 400 volunteers took part in The People Build event. Volunteers came from all four corners of the globe, from Korea to Australia, and from Canada to South America.

The Heineken Big Top, which is erected especially for the festival, featured its biggest line-up ever with 10 concerts featuring a world-class music line-up including the only Irish concerts of the summer from The Flaming Lips, Caribou and Amadou & Mariam.

Festival 2019 will run from 15-28 July 2019.

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