Ireland's first major cultural event of the summer, Carlow Arts Festival, returns next month, with a diverse hybrid programme announced today.

Cutting edge technology collides with culture as Carlow Arts Festival unveil their hybrid programme of live, digital and virtual experiences taking place over 10 days. The festival will featuring works by international and local artists from Ireland, Latin America, Catalonia, Canada, the Netherlands and UK.

Always seeking to create stunning and unique artistic experiences for their audiences, organisers have discovered ways to connect in both the public and digital realm for the 2021 edition.

Carlow Arts Festival will launch their very own custom built Virtual Festival Campus, with venues set to host live events, talks and screen content. This will mark the first time the technology will be showcased for an Irish Festival, and has only been seen at international festivals such as Burning Man and SXSW.

The programme for the public realm includes live events and experiences (with limited capacity) with highlights including: Woman In The Machine, co-created with VISUAL - an exciting large scale film, digital and live project emanating from Carlow's landmark former Braun building where a myriad of artists from music, visual arts, performance and dance will take over this giant, abandoned landmark to create a 72 hour lost weekend event as part of Brightening Air | Coiscéim Coiligh. Woman In The Machine, the filmed experience and the programmed artist’s digital content from over 50 artists will be accessible from 11 June 2021.

Invisible Opera, created by Michael Trainor with Carlow Arts Festival and Irish National Opera, will allow the audience to interact with a sound and light installation using the individual instruments and voices from La bohème housed in individual tent structures.

A continued focus on outdoor work will see SPRAOÍ create stunning installations around the town, while Tumble Circus will bring their brand new Traveling Cycle Circus to Residential and Care Homes around Carlow and Fidget Feet present an aerial explosion of dance and Irish music called A Handful Of Dreams.

Carlovian Cian Kinsella (of Lords of Strutt fame), has been commissioned to create Grow, a site-specific show on his own farmland and throughout the festival. A large scale, high-profile visual art commission from Maser will also be created.

The programme for the digital realm will be screened online and at Carlow Arts Festival’s Virtual Campus (access via Altspace VR) with virtual venues set to host live events, talks and screened content.

The expanded Digital strand includes innovative and immersive digitally native events, a VR Cinema series of curated 360 films including Chalkroom by Laurie Anderson and Hsin-Chien Huang and Rosario Dawson in the stunningly animated punk adventure Battlescar.

Saolré - an Irish short film programme, features 6 films including Drifting, starring Paul Mescal. Architecture On Film is a programme of architecture led short films including The Women Of The Bauhaus, a homage to the forgotten Bauhauswomen.

The Latin American Dance Films programme features documentary and fiction representing a slice of the expansive creativity of that land: America (Latina) - (Latin) America.

Highlights for Live Digital Events include Prometheus, a live interactive online show for children from Catalonia, that retells the Greek myth with Lego with an unexpected spin; The House Never Wins is an award-winning interactive game theatre piece that you can play from the comfort of your own home; Swan Lake The Game is a remix of the famous Russian ballet from the Netherlands, but torn apart and put back together again in the form of an online event.

“Our digitally native, online, virtual and live programme is Carlow Arts Festival continuing to carve out new territory," Festival Director Jo Mangan said of today's announcement.

"We have been building significant expertise and leadership in the digital realm over the last number of years with our Virtual Reality film programming alongside other digitally native work. As well as creating an entirely immersive 360 Virtual Festival Campus to house events this year, we are platforming the best boundary-leaping work in the digital realm from overseas as well as Ireland."

As always we are making the Arts accessible to all, and have worked hard to ensure accessibility is woven into the entirety of the programme," Mangan continued. "This focus is seen in the continuation of Free and Pick Your Price programming and events created specifically for front line workers and Care Homes.

"In addition to commissioning numerous projects this year, we have found ourselves becoming producers and makers ourselves. Bringing artists together from different backgrounds, planning, readjusting, reimagining together - this became the main order of business. This has proved both necessary as well as rewarding as we wrestled this year’s festival into shape.”

A limited number of tickets for all of the live events and digital experiences go on sale today here.

For more information, visit the Carlow Arts Festival website.

Our 2021 @CarlowArts Festival Programme is now live!

Over 50 events for you to experience in person, online and in our virtual space!

Explore the full programme now at https://t.co/Ct9KKqmcKx#CAF21 #carlowartsfestival pic.twitter.com/GYXvGjPg6K

— CarlowArtsFestival (@CarlowArts) May 4, 2021