Since 2012, a gathering has taken place on Inis Oírr, the smallest of the Aran Islands, called Drop Everything. It’s an extraordinary event: cutting-edge contemporary work across performance, music, sound and visual art, food, incredibly fun DJ sets, and an engagement with the local people and landscape that generates a unique atmosphere and legacy. Artists who have participated since 2012 include John Gerrard, Manchán Magan, Sóley Stefánsdóttir, the Tweed Project, Rich Gilligan, Molly Nilsson, Zebra Katz, Maria Lax, Lisa Hannigan, Saint Sister, Eimear Walshe, John Francis Flynn, Robyn Lynch and many, many more.
From food (in 2022, Cúán Greene of Ómós cooked over fire on the beach for attendees, making a seafood boil of brown crab, mussels, clams, langoustine, potato and corn for about 180 people), to merchandise (a collaboration with the Berlin label Starstyling), Drop Everything has managed, somehow, to shrug off the pressures and expectations of contemporary festivals – if one can even frame it as such – and evolve with its own sense of itself, contracting and expanding depending on context, or perhaps even mood. An early slogan of the event was, after all, “everything is subject to change”. [ 62 Irish festivals to head for this summer, from music and comedy to literature and science ] Last weekend, a smaller iteration than usual took place.
On the first evening, the programme was given over to the sunset, with a temporary beach hut doubling as .
