Kilrea Community & Fairy Thorn Association
In 1992, Kilrea launched a cross-community week-long series of events called the Festival of the Fairy Thorn. It was hugely successful and ran until the mid-2000s. Over the years many activities were run for the benefit of all in the community from sports to entertainment, history to music, food and drink to crafts, all designed to bring footfall into the town centre, involve local businesses and provide ‘something for everyone’ in the local community and surrounding areas.
During the initial Covid-19 lock down, conversations on social media indicated significant support for the revival of the festival. This initial interest came to fruition with the formation of the Kilrea Community and Fairy Thorn Association in 2022 which has adopted the goals outlined below:
- Revive, plan, organise and run Kilrea’s Fairy Thorn Festival;
- Hold the festival as a cross-community biennial event to entertain/involve the people of the town and promote its artists, food, locations and wares;
- Plan and run small projects for the benefit of the town, such as park maintenance, site enhancement and entertainment events; and
- Funnel back funds raised into local community regeneration projects/the festival.
Our first event was The Fairy Thorn Festival 2022, which was undoubtedly a resounding success. In 2023 we ran a one-day only festival on Sat 19 August, and as part of our community regeneration efforts at the end of the same year we ran a very successful Participatory Budgeting initiative which has seen a number of community-led projects receive funding and get up and running, You can hear all about them first-hand during the 2024 festival which runs Fri 16 – Sun 18 Aug 2024. We hope to see you there!