AltEnts Children’s Music Festival

Around 40 artists and 4,000 national-school pupils exploring the creative arts together every October - since 2007.

The annual children’s arts festival draws on the organisation’s experience of multidisciplinary arts programming over more than 30 years. It runs each October with workshops, recitals, exhibitions, screenings, readings, rehearsals, concerts and performances in schools, libraries, community centres, crèches, shopping centres, Tallaght Hospital and Rua Red Arts Centre.

Around 40 artists work with roughly 4,000 national-school pupils, exploring all aspects of the creative arts and producing music, dance, visual and literary works by the children themselves. Extended projects are developed each year over a six-to-eight-week period building up to festival week.

Schools, crèches, libraries and Rua Red across Tallaght, Clondalkin, Rathfarnham, Celbridge and Lucan host events, with Rua Red and Tallaght Library acting as central hubs - four schools a day attend music, dance and visual arts workshops there.

Events are carefully selected to hone both intercultural and creative awareness and to support the development of artistic ability from an early age. The programme places participants in the special dual role of both performer and audience - a position that lets children explore their power to evaluate as well as create. In 2016 the festival’s focus changed and it became a music-based festival, with musicians, dancers, poets, film producers and storytellers working with children to explore the many elements of music-making today.