About the Network

LIVE Network was founded in 2018 as a pilot project with Words Ireland, led by Dani Gill, to stimulate literary development outside of main cities and the festival circuit. The project engages with regional venues and has six members across six counties: The Backstage Theatre (Longford), Roscommon Arts Centre, The Riverbank Arts Centre (Newbridge, Kildare), The Source Arts Centre (Thurles, Tipperary), The Droichead Arts Centre (Drogheda, Louth) and The Ramor Theatre (Virginia, Cavan).  

LIVE Network focuses on audience development through bespoke projects, workshops, online events and collaborations with writers and literary makers. It is the first literary network in Ireland to support literary tours and partnership projects outside of main cities and outside of the literary festival circuit. 

''Live Network is an initiative that creates links between the artist and communities often from isolated settings. It was an honour to take part in one such project in Longford reaching a group of people who without LIVE Network I would never have met. I read to a packed theatre, answered questions of local book groups and signed copies of my books for people aged from fifteen to eighty. This was art and entertainment in action reaching beyond the cities to those who are rarely afforded the opportunity to make such valued and enriching connections.''

 -Anne Griffin  https://annegriffinwriter.com

''Now like never before the arts must explore new ways and platforms to make creative work available and accessible to audiences. Having participated in the inaugural series of LIVE Network, I wholeheartedly endorse the LIVE Network as a vital platform on behalf of literature for both writers and audiences alike. It is a warm, inviting and engaging environment.''

-Alan McMonagle https://mmbcreative.com/clients/alan-mcmonagle

''Dani has allowed me to not only access a residency to begin work on a new theatre play her guidance and support enabled me to submit an application to the Arts council for a theatre grant. Dani is a tireless supporter of promoting regional writers and telling regional stories, she has shown this again and again through not only her curation work but her work in allowing writers such as myself gain access to resources which hitherto have been hard to get.''

 -John Connell https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/johnconnell

LIVE Network runs a programme called Yours Sincerely, where writers undertakes a short virtual residencies with venues over a number of weeks, corresponding by letters with a small group of people from the locality  who have the option to write back. The project in 2021 was a huge success that brought special moments to both the writers involved and the people who shared their stories. 

Each writer pens six letters to the group at the end of which there is a cup of tea with the writer and the group to meet and chat.  

Yours Sincerely, Patrick DeWitt

The Zine Project is happening in 2022 with writer and zine maker Sarah Maria Griffin. Sarah is collaborating with LIVE Network to realise a participatory zine project with groups of young people. The project will run from March to May and Sarah will encourage participants to create their own zines. An in-person workshop will take place at the local venue for the group to meet Sarah and make zines at the end of the project.

 Sarah Maria Griffin is a novelist and interdisciplinary writer. In 2019 her novel, Other Words For Smoke won an An Post Irish Book Award. Spare & Found Parts was shortlisted the previous year. In 2017, she won the European Science Fiction Chyrsalis Award, and was the Writer in Residence at NUI Maynooth. She makes and distributes zines via post through her ‘Wordfury’ project, each pack comes with ephemera such as stickers, badges and small surprises.  

Give a Poem, Get a Poem is a project designed produced by LIVE Network, in association with local schools. Children have creative writing workshops with published poets and are then invited to write their own poetry. Each child transcribes a finished poem to specially designed cards that are then distributed in the local community with a special batch posted to the other schools participating so that every child who writes a poem gets one as a gift in return.  

Drop off points in communities in 2021 included Direct Provision Centres, Nursing Homes, local libraries and local houses.

Project video 2021