Wexford Festival Opera entertains at Enniscorthy Creative Activity Garden

Centred on an amphitheatre styled area, the Creative Activity Garden at the HSE’s St. John’s Community Hospital complex in Enniscorthy recently hosted an autumn collaboration with Wexford Festival Opera

The multi-functional space for gatherings and health and wellbeing activities in the heart of the HSE healthcare campus was also utilised of late for an outdoor event in September to mark ‘Culture Night’.

As part of Wexford Festival Opera’s ‘Synapses’ element of its Learning and Engagement outreach programme (which presents performances at care homes and day centres), singers Vlad Sima and Charlotte Baker, accompanied on piano by Rebecca Warren, came to entertain at the Creative Activity Garden. All three feature in the forthcoming 75th Wexford Festival Opera, which will take place from the 15th to 31st of October.

The occasion in Enniscorthy was also addressed by Vice-Chair of Wexford Festival Opera Yvonne Mays and its Education Outreach Co-ordinator Elizabeth Drwal.

Culture Night/Oíche Chultúir, in its 21st year and supported by the Arts Council, celebrates culture, creativity and the arts and seeks to actively promote the belief that this rich and varied culture is alive, treasured and nurtured in people’s lives, today and every day.

In association with Creative Places and Wexford County Council, the Culture Night event at the Creative Activity Garden featured a specially curated music programme ‘as Gaeilge’ presented by ‘The Yellow Bellows’/Music Generation Wexford group.

The attendance at the events in the Creative Activity Garden include residents and service users, staff, visitors and neighbours of the campus in Enniscorthy. Refreshments are provided by the catering team from St. John’s Community Hospital.

The Activity Garden project was supported as a placement incentive by Wexford County Council’s Culture and Creativity team and Age Friendly programme, in partnership with the HSE, Creative Ireland, the Irish Architectural Foundation and the Enniscorthy Men’s Shed. Opened in September of last year, the development was also made possible thanks to funding from the government’s Town and Village Renewal Scheme.