FOUR Donegal heritage groups have been shortlisted for top awards at the annual National Heritage Week awards ceremony which takes place on Friday. The Heritage Council has shortlisted Donegal GAP Heritage and History Group, Inishowen Rivers Trust/ Loughs Agency, Áras Sheáin Bhain and Togra Fiontar & Cultúr Uladh CTR who will all be hoping to take home an award at the ceremony in Gloster House, Offaly.
Donegal GAP Heritage and History Group has been nominated in the Living Heritage Award category, which recognises events that successfully encouraged a greater appreciation of an element of our living heritage – traditional crafts, skills and practices. Their event, entitled ‘Treasures in our Bogs’, was a veritable feast of culture and tradition. By inviting artists, musicians, writers, historians, archaeologists and craftspeople to participate in the event, it demonstrated how the bogs of southwest Donegal have contributed not only to our natural heritage, but to our language, our music, our oral history and how its impact is felt in nearly every aspect of life in the county.
Meanwhile, Inishowen Rivers Trust/ Loughs Agency will be hoping to take home the Water Heritage Award which recognises the event that best explored how a canal, river, lake or sea shaped the heritage of a locality or celebrates water as an integral part of our natural heritage. They organised the Culdaff River Heritage Workshop which brought a local historian and the Loughs Agency together to develop the relationship that local people have with their river and with each other.
Both Áras Sheáin Bhain and Togra Fiontar & Cultúr Uladh CTR are nominated in the Irish Language Award category, celebrating the best event through the Irish Language and which encouraged participation or activity in the Irish language.
The National Heritage Awards recognises the enormous contribution of individuals and community groups across Ireland in ensuring the preservation, protection, and promotion of Ireland’s built, natural and cultural heritage.
The awards honour those organisers who created the most engaging and inspiring events and projects for National Heritage Week 2023 as well as Ireland’s Heritage Hero. Almost 2,000 events and projects took place around the country in August during National Heritage Week, as communities and individuals answered the Heritage Council’s invitation to explore this year’s theme of living heritage.
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