YES Artistic Curator – Shauna Kelpie
YES Creative Producer – Jonathan Burgess
YES No Ordinary Women Curator – Martina Devlin
YES Molly Bed designer – Tracey Lindsay
YES Molly Films Cinematographer-Director – Sophie Muzychenko
YES Project Manager – Margaret Kelly
YES Marketing Liaison – Ciarán Doran
YES Marketing Consultants – Gray’s Communications
YES PR Consultant (GB) – Michael Barrett
YES PR Consultant (IRE) – Aiken PR
Arts Over Borders Artistic Directors: Seán Doran and Liam Browne
YES takes place in Derry~Londonderry and north Donegal from 13-16 June. It is the culmination of ULYSSES European Odyssey, an unprecedented international project supported with funding through Creative Europe that since 2022 has seen partners in 18 cities across Europe take Joyce’s novel as the starting point to explore contemporary issues, from migration to the environment and disability to global data.
Women artists from cities involved in ULYSSES European Odyssey will travel to Ireland for YES to present work in venues and public spaces across Derry~Donegal. The programme will include theatre, dance, visual arts, installations, film, writing, photography, textiles, circus, music, rap and song.
Award-winning stage and screen actors Fiona Shaw, Harriet Walter, Siobhan McSweeney, Eve Hewson and Adjoa Andoh are among the eight actors participating in The Molly Films, in which each of them reads one of the eight long sentences that form Molly Bloom’s extraordinary stream of consciousness monologue in the Penelope episode of Ulysses. The films will be screened separately across the festival.
At a time when more is being written about both Joyce’s wife Nora Barnacle and Molly Bloom, YES and its theme The Future: A Female Vision invite audiences to think about the role of women in the writer’s life and work, and more widely, in society, in art, in business, in politics, as thinkers, as creatives, as leaders.
YES and ULYSSES European Odyssey 2022-2024
YES is produced and curated by highly respected producing team ARTS OVER BORDERS Ireland (artistic directors Seán Doran & Liam Browne), who have received co-funding from the Department of Foreign Affairs Ireland and have developed ULYSSES European Odyssey with partners in the following cities: Athens, Trieste, Vilnius, Budapest, Marseille, Paris, Berlin, Lugo, Copenhagen, Istanbul, Cluj, Zürich, Leeuwarden, Eleusis, Oulu, Lisbon, Dublin and, finally, Derry~Donegal.
Arts Over Borders has developed ULYSSES European Odyssey with its Lead Partner Claudia Woolgar, Director Brave New World Producties.
Derry was chosen as the final city because Molly Bloom’s soliloquy begins and ends with the word ‘yes’, and on the streets of Derry, the word ‘yes’ is used as a greeting, a colloquial form of ‘hello’. The city was also chosen as the main location for the female-led programme, because historically the city relied on a predominantly female workforce, with women often the main breadwinners at the time that Joyce wrote Ulysses. When it was published, more than 40 shirt factories were operating in the city, with women making up most of the workforce. YES connects that historical context with contemporary female creative production.
Shauna Kelpie, Artistic Curator for YES, says: “Countless words have been written about Ulysses, very often from the male perspective, so we’re really excited that YES should be created by women and to see how they interpret Joyce’s masterpiece. YES will celebrate the work of established and emerging women artists from across Europe in a packed programme of events and activities as we welcome the world to Derry and Donegal over four exciting days in June 2024 – including the first ever Molly~Bloomsday on June 16. Local people and communities as well as visitors will have the chance to connect, share and interact with a diverse range of artforms curated to showcase the exceptional creative talent and distinctive voices of women.”
Seán Doran, co-director of ARTS OVER BORDERS with Liam Browne, says: “In bringing Joyce’s Dublin-based novel Ulysses north in such a deliberate way, YES seeks to highlight the year in which he was writing the Penelope episode (Molly’s soliloquy), 1921, which also happened to be the year that the Government of Ireland Act divided Ireland into two territories, Southern Ireland and Northern Ireland – a political development that Joyce would have been acutely conscious of. There is a poignancy that the largest ever celebration of Joyce’s epic novel, commencing in Athens in 2022 and taking place across 18 European cities returns not just to Dublin but to both parts of Ireland for its final two episodes – episode 17, Ithaca, in Dublin with the award-winning Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) along with the UEO Grand Arts & Society Symposium (GASS) at Trinity College Dublin, and finally, with episode 18, Penelope, in Derry~Donegal.”
Molly’s soliloquy begins and ends with the word ‘yes’ and has provided inspiration for artists such as Kate Bush. June 16th (the date on which all the action of Ulysses takes place) has been dubbed Bloomsday by Joyce fans after the book’s central character Leopold Bloom, but for YES it will be renamed Molly Bloomsday in celebration of Molly, Joyce’s most famous female character, and to mark the end of ULYSSES European Odyssey
ULYSSES European Odyssey members photo, taken in the library of the Literaturhaus, Zürich, where Joyce wrote some of Ulysses.
L-R: Sean Doran (Arts Over Borders IE: The Member for Dundalk), Jonathan Burgess (Arts Over Borders NI, The Member for Derry/Donegal), Riccardo Cepach (Museo Joyce Trieste IT, The Member for Trieste), Kees van der Meiden (Noorderlicht NL, The Member for Leeuwarden/Groningen), Ciaran Doran (Marketing, Arts Over Borders, The Member for Guildford), Liam Browne (Arts Over Borders IE, The Member for Worthing), Andreea Iacob (Act.Create.Enjoy RO, The Member for Cluj), Mariana Brandão (Arena Ensemble PT, The Member for Lisbon), Gülen Gürler Hurley (Yalan Dünya Films TK, The Member for Istanbul), Claudia Woolgar (Brave New World Productions NL, The Member for Leeuwarden/Rotterdam), Steven Sander (Rimini Protokoll DE, The Member for Berlin), Shauna Kelpie (Arts Over Borders NI, The Member for Derry/Donegal), Eglé Vitkuté (Vilnius Museum LT, The Member for Vilnius), Jarkko Halunen (Lumo Light Festival FI, The Member for Oulu), Gethan Dick (gethan&myles FR, The Member for Marseille), Vera Petmeza (Onassis Stegi GR, The Member for Athens), Myles Quin (gethan&myles FR, The Member for Marseille), Yannis Pappas (Chorus GR, The Member for Eleusis), Alistair Daniel (chARTer 309, The Member for Liverpool), Mikko Salmi (Lumo Light Festival FI, The Member for Oulu), Firat Jacob Tas (Blaagaard Teater DK, The Member for Copenhagen, Maté Gáspár (Budapest Brand HU), The Member for Budapest, Ben McKnight (Communications Manager, The Member for London), Benedict Schlepper-Connolly (Museum of Literature Ireland IE, The Member for Dublin) and Uxío Novoneyra (Fundación Uxío Novoneyra SP, The Member for Lugo)
UEO Derry~Londonderry Emerging Artists’ Residency
Laura Douglas & Laura McElhinney
ULYSSES European Odyssey offers short residency opportunities in partner cities for 30 emerging artists as part of the legacy of this pan-European project.
Each city partner has sent two artists on a residency to another partner’s city of a different art form, thereby seeking to enrich their professional practice through inter-disciplinary residencies. Artists were chosen on the basis of having demonstrated an interest in the hosting city’s Arts & Society contemporary European theme. They must also practice a different art form from that of the hosting city’s public event. The project has offered the emerging artists the opportunity to travel without the pressure to produce work and ideally to experience UEO’s public events.
Artists sent from Derry~Donegal are Laura Douglas to Berlin and Laura McElhinney to Eleusis.
Click here to read all about the Artists’ Exchange in ULYSSES European Odyssey
Laura Douglas
Actor, writer & creative facilitator
Laura completed her undergraduate degree in Drama with Music Performance at the University of Ulster, before deciding to head over the water to train at Arts Educational Schools, London, leaving with a Masters of Acting. At ArtsEd, she trained under Aileen Gonsalves, founder of the Gonsalves Method, and she has just been invited to be part of the first cohort on the Gonsalves Method Teachers & Directors Accreditation Programme.
As well as Acting and Writing, Laura is also a Creative Facilitator, working mainly with performers aged between 14 and 21.She is extremely passionate about empowering this age group, especially those who want to move into the industry professionally; creative wellbeing is always a big part of all the work she does.
Laura McElhinney
Musician
Laura McElhinney is 18 years old and lives in Derry~Londonderry. She is in her final year at school and is studying for A Levels in Maths, Music and French at Thornhill College in Derry. She has recently been accepted to study for a BA in Music Production at the University of York. Laura has been playing the piano from an early age and achieved Grade 8 by the time she was 13 years old. She has been teaching piano ever since.
At the age of 16 Laura was accepted onto Richard Meyrick’s scholarship programme PianoMan to further her classical skills and repertoire. This led to her having Bi-monthly lessons with professional classical pianist Veronika Ilinskaya to develop and build Laura’s repertoire which now includes Chopin’s Grande Waltz Brilliante, Debussy Estampes:Pagodes, Beethoven Sonata B Flat Major Sonata and Chopin’s Ballade Number 3. She was also invited to participate in a 5 day residency in Tunbridge Wells with international young pianists, focusing on international performance.
Laura is naturally gifted and has a passion for classical music, however, in recent years her interest has moved towards learning more about music production and away from performance. An introduction to female music professionals in a European context could open vast new opportunities for Laura and have a transformative impact on her choices as an artist. We are currently exploring connections with the UEO partnership in Eleusis which has strong connections with digital music production and DJing and in which Laura has a strong interest and willingness to visit.
UEO Book Derry~Londonderry Episod XVIII Writer
Kerri ní Dochartaigh
ULYSSES European Odyssey has commissioned eighteen established writers, one from each city/region, to write a chapter in a response to their Arts & Society theme within the context of their city.
Just as Ulysses is innovative in its form and language, so the writers will be chosen with a view to reflecting a breadth of genres, styles and innovations. Each writer will ideally attend their own city’s event. All the (new) chapters from the 18 cities/regions will be brought together in a book publication: ULYSSES European Odyssey.
Kerri ní Dochartaigh will write the Derry ~ Donegal chapter
Kerri ní Dochartaigh
Kerri ní Dochartaigh is a mother, writer and grower. She has written for The Guardian, BBC, RTE, The Irish Times and others. Her work currently explores ideas of emergency, interconnectedness and ecologies of care. Her first book, Thin Places, was published by Canongate in Spring 2021, for which she was awarded the Butler Literary Award 2022, and highly commended for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2021.
Cacophony of Bone was published by Canongate in May 2023 and was longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing 2023. She lives in the west of Ireland with her family.