Manchester’s Irish Festival beats recession to breaks new records

Despite the recession, this year's Manchester Irish Festival has broken all previous records for attendance with sell out events all over the city.

The annual event, now in its fifteenth year, staged over 200 events at over fifty different venues in an action packed sixteen day festival, making it one the biggest Irish Festivals in Europe. It was launched in a civic reception at Manchester Town Hall on Friday 5th March and ran until Sunday 21 March.

Lawrence Hennigan from the festival website said “It has been a very hectic two weeks, which surpassed all our expectations. A number of the events sold out and we had queues forming to get into most of the bars on St Patrick’s Day itself. I think most people just wanted to come out and have a great time and forget about the worries of the recession. Attendances at all our events have broken new records this year and we saw a whole host of celebrities in the village joining in the party with everyone else.”

The two week celebration has featured a whole host of major concerts which included the sell out ‘Young, Gifted & Green’ concert for Christie’s Cancer Hospital which raised over £10,000 for the charity.

Headline Irish artists who have performed in the city during the festival included the likes of Peter Kay, The Dubliners, Davey Arthur and the Fureys, Ronan Keating, Jedward, The Indians, John McNicholl and the highly acclaimed Henry Girls from Donegal. The award winning group did an exclusive UK launch of their new album for the festival.

Other highlights included the staging of the annual St Patrick’s Day Parade which featured close to 2,000 participants and attracted an estimated crowd of 100,000 bring the city to a standstill for the three hour procession. It was officially named by a representative of the Irish Embassy who had visited the Birmingham Parade the year before as the biggest Parade in the UK.

Albert Square in the city centre was taken over by Mulligans of Deansgate who erected a giant entertainment marquee for a three day St Patrick’s weekend festival. The annual craft market was also staged in the Square and provided a great attraction for tourists looking for a St Patrick’s day gift.

St Patrick’s Day itself saw the city’s pubs and clubs turned green with thousands of people packing out the venues from early morning until late at night. Levenshulme which is home to the biggest Irish community staged a series of free Tradfest concerts sponsored by Guinness.

Mulligans of Deansgate in the city centre closed off the road outside of the venue and held an Irish Street party. St Kentigern’s Irish club in Fallowfield flew over Ireland top showband ‘The Indians’ for their St Patrick’s night concert. While Manchester’s St Patrick’s Society commissioned a massive world beating five tier 15 ft St Patrick’s Day cake to celebrate their 75th anniversary.

The festival’s official website now ranked by google as the number one Irish festival website attracted thousands of visitors on a daily basis and almost crashed on St Patrick’s Day itself because of the increase in traffic.