Thanks to the generous support of the Friends of West Cork Music who kindly donated the value of their tickets, plans are underway to stream live concerts during the ten days this summer when the 2020 Festival should have been taking place.

As our Festival musicians are based in many different countries and even string quartet members live apart, it will not be an easy task to bring them together for these performances. However we are looking at ways within the current regulations to make this happen, using specific studios in European and US cities.

These performances will be presented on our website each day from Friday 26th June to Sunday 5th July and although you will be enjoying them from the comfort of your own home, rather than in the library of Bantry House or St Brendan’s Church, we hope that they will uplift and provide hope during this time.

We can only present these live streams thanks to the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland, the Crespo Foundation, Cork County Council and Failte Ireland.

Following the unavoidable cancellation of the 2020 WCLF due to the Covid-19 pandemic, plans are underway to move most of the writing workshops and professional development sessions including a group session with a literary agent and individual sessions with an editor online.

Exact details of these online workshops will be announced shortly. Those who have already booked places on the writing workshops will be contacted soon by a member of the Festival team.

We would like to thank Cork County Council for their support of the 2020 online programme.

The Irish Government’s COVID-19 Roadmap is enabling us to come up with plans for the 2020 Masters of Tradition.

Although the live versions of this summer’s West Cork Chamber Music Festival and the West Cork Literary Festival have been replaced by streamed and online alternatives, we are hopeful that we will be able to stage Masters of Tradition in Bantry in August.

It will be a reduced programme, featuring one main concert and one extra intimate performance each day. The requirement for 2 week quarantine looks set to be still in place, and while we hope that this will be reduced, we recommend that our international audience keeps an eye on these regulations before making plans to travel. We will be adhering to all government regulations to make the festival happen.

More details will be announced in the coming months.

We are grateful for the generous support of the Arts Council of Ireland and Cork County Council.