Culture Night at City Hall

Tours of the Lord Mayor’s Office & Council Chamber 16:00 - 21:00

Tours of the Lord Mayor's Office and Council Chamber at Cork City Hall. Each architectural piece, object, document, or photograph has its own unique story.

During your visit to Cork's City Hall you can explore the Council Chamber, built by Cork mastercraftsmen in the early Irish Free State, a Lord Mayor's room with eighteenth century silver craftsmanship, admiral hats linked to the Throwing of the Dart, the formal gold key to open the front door to the stories of the martyred Lord Mayor Tomás MacCurtain and Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney, to the full century suite of portraits of Lords Mayor.

Join us for a night of music on the Plaza at New Civic Offices to celebrate Culture Night.

PlaySpaces 17:00-21:00

After a highly successful summer-long run in venues across Cork City, PlaySpaces comes to City Hall for Culture Night.

PlaySpaces is a multi-year participatory arts project demonstrating genuine child collaboration in civic design.

Beginning in early 2025 with creative workshops at St. Vincent’s Convent Primary School, Blackpool, children imagined child-only spaces through drawing, collage, storytelling and model-making.

The collaboration emerged from Cork Child Friendly City consultancy revealing children’s desire for spaces authentically designed for them. Led by artist Chris Finnegan in partnership with Cork Midsummer Festival, the project expanded in late 2025 to include three Múin Afterschool centres across Cork City, with accessibility consultation from the Crann Centre.

PlaySpaces demonstrates that participatory arts can fundamentally shift children’s relationship with public space and civic life – not through symbolic consultation but through sustained collaboration where young voices genuinely shape outcomes. A public trail of child-designed play spaces launched in summer 2026 across Cork Opera House, The Everyman, St. Peters, Cork City Library and The Lord Mayor’s Pavilion.

A Cork Midsummer Festival production, the project is supported by the Arts Council’s Arts in Early Learning and Childcare Scheme and Cork City Council through Creative Communities Scheme. With support from Sample Studios.

Crucial Moves 17:00-21:00

Crucial Moves is a collaborative arts and transformative education project that brings young people from migrant backgrounds together with artists and creative educators to work collaboratively towards system change.

On display will be a selection of works from the exhibition produced during a unique residency - a journey from Cork to Donegal by an unique group of artists, community members, and emerging voices travelling together and making work in response to the places they pass through and the stories they carry. 

Crucial Moves traces movement, migration, and the landscapes that hold us, conceived in collaboration with colleagues, collaborators and creative communities. 

Crucial Moves aims to use the arts to explore ways to create new systems and centre and celebrate the value of a diverse Ireland.

Crucial Moves is generously supported by the Arts Council's Children and Young People's Arts Project Award, MTU Crawford, Cork Midsummer Festival and Irish Aid, as well as its many contributors.

This showing coordinated by Helen O’Keefe through MTU Creativity and Change.

Here, The Queer Appear - Terence MacSwiney Quay

An outdoor public artwork made up of flashing beacon lights, each one representing a member of the LGBTQI+ community in Cork and the surrounding area.

The lights will be installed along the edge of the building, and will be activated from dusk until City Hall closes for the night.

We were Always Here

In collaboration with the Circus Factory, performers centered around the Cork 800 Monument on Anglesea St. will perform a Live Art Intervention  at intervals during the evening. 

(image: Darragh Kane)

For full information about the project, dates of showings, and what’s next, visit its dedicated website, queerappearcork.com.

Wonderful Women of Cork Walking Tour 17:30 - 19:00

Plaza Meeting Point

You don't have to be a woman to enjoy this walk. Cork City is a very walkable city with loads of hidden treasures and facts to explore. Take a walk through the city and learn about some of the wonderful women who have made an impact in the city.

The walk will take approximately 1.5 hours at a gentle pace.

Five Generations of the Cork Fire Brigade 17:30-19:30

Meet a 5^th Generation Cork City Fire fighter.

View some of the equipment in use in the days gone by, and images of when the Fireman’s Hut was in it’s original location on Patrick's St.

(Image courtesy P. Poland)

Now and Then: Circus meets Street Theatre 

6:30 - 17:00; 17:30-18:00

by Lidija Sola & Noelle Ní Riagáin

Social media-obsessed-aerial insta model Pookie and no nonsense hardy older lady Nancy

“Now and Then” is the unlikely friendship between Pookie (Lidija Šola), and Nancy (Noelle Ní Riagáin). Featuring an 8 metre freestanding aerial rig, the show is a generational clash, filled with slapstick comedy, aerial acrobatics and a heartwarming story of connection in a digital world.

‍Hardy older Woman “Nancy” is going about her day, pottering around, and getting her jobs done. While Pookie, a young insta-model, glued to her phone, is showing off her Aerial skills, hoping to get new followers for her many social media platforms.

The eternal worlds of young and old collide when they inhabit the same space, struggling with getting their individual needs met.

 Contrasting lifestyles collide in a captivating display of physical theatre and circus arts, creating a heartwarming and hilarious exploration of generational differences and unexpected connection. The question is “Can they find a way to both respect each other's needs, and even become friends through it all?”

This playful and engaging performance offers a glimpse into the enduring power of connection and the resilience of the human spirit, reminding us that sometimes, the greatest bonds are formed when we least expect them.

About the artists

Lidija Šola is a Croatian contemporary circus artist based in Ireland. 

‍Noelle Ní Ríagain is an Irish Artist who works in the medium of Physical Theatre and Clown. 

Show Developed through Spraoi NEST

Supported by Promenade Creative Producer Supports

The Devil's In The Dance Hall

Culture Night late presents ‘The Devils in the Dance Hall’ - inspired by the true story of Jimmy Gralton and the suppression of Ireland’s rural dance halls in the early 20th century.

Drawing on oral history, folk memory, and the energy of the big-band era, the performance celebrates the collective joy of dance as a form of defiance.

Through spoken word, song, and the roaring sounds of The Gralton Big Band, it tells how Ireland’s old dance halls became centres of community life, offering music, learning, debate, and freedom of expression, until church and state moved to close them down through the introduction of the 1935 Dance Hall Act.

As the performance unfolds, the boundary between stage and floor dissolves, and the audience are invited to dance the night away.

Choreographer and creator of the piece Edwina Guckian will teach the gathered audience dance steps across swing, trad, foxtrot, slow sets, sean-nós, lindy hop and set-dance, inviting the audience to dance, move, or observe - providing an experience for those with dance experience and with none, including people with reduced mobility.