Approx 20 people turned up to the first meeting in the Carnegie Theatre where I presented the first draft of the plan. People were into the idea and many volunteered to help. It was beautiful! Financing the festival was going to be the biggest hurdle as it was too late to apply for grants for this year. I believed and still believe that everyone who worked or performed at the festival should be paid of course so I made some enquiries which proved fruitless & infuriating! Honestly in such an affluent, well resourced area the amount of greedy, disgusting, old world, self serving, political posturing that went on made me sick to my stomach!
It looked like it wasn't going to happen but my attempts to walk away from the idea proved equally futile so after some persuasion from friends to keep going I eventually came up with a possible solution, to hold a livestream fundraiser event in the Carnegie Theatre, after all they had all this new livestreaming tech they had just spent a fortune on gathering dust so why not make use of it and raise some much needed funds in the process?
A community effort. They agreed so I set about organising the event for 30th June, only a few weeks away at this point.

It was a race against time...

The idea

Following yet another failed attempt to raise funds for the festival I once again tried to walk away from the whole thing but was once again persuaded to rock on with the plan by many friends and artists who agreed to play for donations from the public so in the end we decided to focus on utilising the free tent and on promoting the "Scene on the Green" Festival instead. So we rocked on!
We, Jerry O'Sullivan, Kit Dunlop, Saffron Willetts & I, set up a spread sheet and started filling slots for anyone who wanted to perform in the tent during the festival given the conditions. We wanted to cater for as many different tastes as possible so the line up started to look very interesting very quickly.

Kenmare is usually a trad or covers kinda town catering for the tourists which is completely understandable but it gets very boring for a lot of us so we booked Rock, Blues, Folk, Classical, Rap, Funk, African, Jazz, Disco & Trad. We had Open Mics and Workshops, we even had an entire Avant Garde day so it was shaping up very nicely from the beginning.
Of course there was the occasional drama and falling outs and what have you but for the most part the vibe was wonderful and exciting, it was a good time to be alive!

To make things even more interesting I introduced a new element to the mix, the Cherry on the Icing on the Cake so to speak..

The "Scene on the Green" Song Contest.

I had already recorded 3 songs earlier this year with Tony O'Flaherty at the legendary Sulán Studios in Ballyvourney and I loved the experience plus I came away with 3 new songs sounding better than anything I had ever recorded before! It was after that I decided to ask Kit about booking a slot during the festival. Believe me when I tell you at that point ending up organising the entire festival wasn't even on my radar, how life takes us on these twists and turns, the story of my life it would seem!
So Tony offered to sponsor a day's recording with him in Ballyvourney so it seemed like the perfect prize.

The entire festival was almost filled and ready to go in no time at all, it was amazing!

More and more amazing artists appeared out of nowhere, from not so far away down the road, new friendships forged! It was a beautiful time, an exciting time, a time of true community!