The 12th annual NUI Galway Arts Festival, Múscailt, will run from February 6-10. The Festival programme, which was launched this week by poet Rita Ann Higgins, contains a mix of music, art, performance and film, with many free events to which the public are welcome.

This year’s theme is Illumination/Soilsiú and fun features at the festival include pop-up sculptures, protest art, street art, origami, hip-hop and a ‘yarn bomb’, where structures on campus are decked out in bespoke knitwear.

The Bank of Ireland Student Theatre will host Mise Scéal Cailín, the hit puppet show from Branar; a Poetry Slam with MC Pete Mullineaux; new writings and performances from NUI Galway’s students and staff in Solo Show and a production of The Clean House by Sarah Ruhl, performed by Dramsoc.

Deep Sea/Deep Space, a video installation created for last September’s Sea2sky Festival, will be on show in the University Art Gallery.

Anthony J Faulder-Mawson will transform a glass bridge on campus and five selected artists will show proposals for large-scale original art-works for the NUI Galway campus. Former MA students of Art Therapy will also present new work in Sacred Space –Porous Place in the Arts Millennium Building.

Marielle MacLeman, artist in residence with Geology and Zoology, will show new works at the Zoology and Marine Biology Museum and will be in residence at the James Mitchell Geology Museum throughout the week.

Special guest artist, Sinéad Aldridge, will launch Artsoc’s annual show Derelicte and deliver an illustrated lecture entitled Stop Making Sense –Play Havoc, on protest art or the aesthetics of resistance.
Juggling and magic join forces as guest artiste Yann Frisch performs a superb magic manipulation act in the Bailey Allen Hall.

The Galway Musical Society, GUMS, will perform Spring Awakening, in the Town Hall Theatre while the Witless Band Competition Final takes place in the Student Union Bar with judges and public vote. Music for Galway will present a concert featuring Rolf Hind on piano, playing Debussy and Beyond in the Aula Maxima. NUI Galway Orchestra. Tradsoc, Choralsoc and Diplóma in Trad music students will also perform.

For more, read this week's Galway City Tribune.