Words Ireland Conference 2016

WordCon 2016 has been a great success. The conference, held on Thursday May 19 in the National Library of Ireland, focused on the topic of literary festivals and how to improve their organisation, the content they provide, and how to treat the guests that are invited to them. The seminars that divided the day included festival organisers, programme managers and authors, who all told of their experiences, positive and negative, of literary festivals and how such events can be improved in the future.

Joanne Harris was of course the guest speaker at the conference, who made an excellent impression on the audience and expressed how pleased she was that the conference had been set up in the first place. Ms Harris stressed how important it is for like-minded people to gather together in such a way to discuss good practice in relation to the arts.
In all, the conference brought people together to discuss the significance of arts festivals and how important they are in the Irish cultural calender, along with how beneficial literary and arts festivals can be and how necessary it is that everyone involved leaves them having had a positive experience.