Our Highlights for the BFF week
October 04, 2025
Hello everyone!
This isn’t our usual newsletter — just a quick highlight of the events for the Ballina Fringe Festival that we'd like to recommend. These include the ones organised by us and BFF committee, by some of our members, or featuring our members.
For our usual newsletter please send over your events and posters asap at info@thencf.com.
TheNCF- BFF Residency events with artist in residence Conor O'Grady
As part of the NCF Cultural Co-op – Ballina Fringe Festival Residency, visual artist Conor O’Grady will develop a series of site-specific installations. His work often draws on social research, archival sources, and found materials, using these to create environments that open up new ways of looking at familiar subjects.
For this residency, O’Grady will bring together elements from earlier projects alongside his current research, building installations that connect past and present strands of his practice.
Artist Talk 4.30pm Sunday 5th October at TheNCF.
End of Residency Showcase 4.30 pm Saturday 11th October at the IQ Ballina.
Admission free. All welcome.
An Fhilteán, Folded Land
Opening at Ballina Library on Saturday, October 4th, An Fhilteán, Folded Land – an international exhibition of geometric works on paper featuring artists from Ireland, the USA, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Chile with landscape as an underlying theme.
An Fhilteán is a soft, melodic Irish word meaning “the fold” or “scrolled.”, it evokes the folded and rolling landscape of North Mayo, blanketed in bog and hills and the nature of paper as the uniting material and theme of landscape of all seven artists.
The exhibition runs until Friday, October 24th, 2025.
Participating artists: Michael Coppelov (UK), Bernie Colhoun (Ireland), Avazeh Hashemloo (Sweden), Scott Idleman (USA), Elisabeth Kinsella (Ireland), David Willburn (USA), Christian Zaelzer (Chile/Canada).
The exhibition is curated by Michael O’Boyle.
Opening hours: Tues-Sat 10:00am – 5:00pm. Admission free.
Queer Shed Social
Queer Shed Mayo invites queers of all shapes, identities and uncertainties to our first social in the Mary Robinson Centre. Join our members to learn more about the new Queer Shed groups aiming to bring LGBTI+ people across rural Ireland together through skill sharing, learning and community. We’ll be sharing snacks and crafts on the day, anyone is welcome to bring something along or just join in to get to know people. Be part of our growing community in Mayo and our wider network across Ireland. A space to feel welcome, without judgement, a place to be yourself.
Free admission.
YOP - In Vile Viciousness EP launch
Ballina’s YOP release their second EP, In Vile Viciousness, with a gig at the Ballina Arts Centre as part of the Ballina Fringe Festival.
The self-recorded the 4 track EP was mixed by the legendary Jackie Cadiou (Syndrome 81, Litovsk, An Slua). It comes out on Friday 10th of October on vinyl and digital through Distro-y records and wahshtuff records. The band’s darkwave sound, described as a mix of Pink Floyd and NIN, adds noisey guitars, hypnotic bass lines and dark vocals to metronomic drum machine rhythms and dreamy synth melodies. A video for the song Dialogue 642 will be out the week prior to the gig.
Very special guests on the night are Cork 5 piece The Altered Hours. In the decade since their last gig in the town the psychedelic rockers have blown away audiences at festivals and venues around Ireland and Europe. Including 2 international tours supporting The Fontaines DC. Some songs from their forthcoming 4th (I repeat 4th) album, out this November, can be heard on a live session they did for RTE Radio 1 last year.
DJ PC will soothe the souls of all in attendance at the mezzanine bar.
YOP – In Vile Viciousness
Out *10/10/25*
On vinyl and digital exclusively on Bandcamp (Distro-y Records and Washstuff Records)
Friday 10th October, 9PM, Ballina Arts Center
10€ Tickets here:
https://ballinaartscentre.ticketsolve.com/ticketbooth/shows/873678175
Sailing Stones Live – a family friendly music event
Jenny Lindfors (under the moniker Sailing Stones) is a captivating singer/ songwriter whose songs have been described as “demure majesty” by The Line Of Best Fit. Her music has received regular airplay on BBC 6Music from Gideon Coe and Don Letts, and her debut album Polymnia was described as “a contemporary classic” by Berlin based publication NBHAP.
Before relocating to the UK almost twenty years ago, a first album under her own name (When The Night Time Comes) made waves in Ireland, with appearances on Other Voices, regular airplay on 2FM and sharing the stage with Mundy, Rodrigo y Gabriela and more.
Her return to live performance follows an intensive period of song writing, observed through the prism of new motherhood. This spectrum of new songs explores matrescence, revealing a turbulent inner world through still-life snapshots of domesticity. Recorded in stolen moments both at home, and in a chapel in rural Wales, these songs have metamorphosed into the psychedelic folk album “Slow Magic”, which is due for release in May 2026.
Jenny’s ethereal vocals and hypnotic guitar playing is reminiscent of Agnes Obel, Linda Perhacs and the lost demo tapes of Laurel Canyon.
Saturday 11th, 2PM at the Ballina Library.
Admission free. All ages welcome.
Colin Barrett - in conversation
A Conversation with Colin Barrett, local author, long-listed for the International Booker Prize with his first novel Wild Houses(2024). He has also written two short story collections called Young Skins (2013) and Homesickness (2022). These are works of fiction exploring lives of ordinary people, often young people and marginal characters, and are often set in and around Ballina.
Colin Barrett has consistently received awards in Ireland since the 2010s and has received international recognition for Wild Houses (2024).
This event is Colin’s first public event in Ballina, his native place, and the inspiration and backdrop for most of his work. Ballina appears often in his writing. Colin will be in conversation with Ballina poet Finola Cahill, discussing his work, his creative process and the inspiration Ballina has provided for his work.
Saturrday, October 11th, 3:00 PM , Ballina Presbyterian Church, Walsh Street
€10. Tickets here:
https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/colin-barrett-in-conversation-tickets-1655202107059?aff=ebdsoporgprofile&_gl=1*53hfys*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTk1NzAyMjAzMi4xNzU5NTk2MzY1*_ga_TQVES5V6SH*czE3NTk1OTYzNjQkbzEkZzAkdDE3NTk1OTYzNjQkajYwJGwwJGgw