Kilkenny’s newest festival kicks off this weekend
It's promising everything from slime to snakes

Kilkenny’s to get a new festival.
A programme of 40, virtual events will be rolled out across nine days from this Saturday.
There are snakes, slime, space talks and a Bubble Show with plenty of school-based sessions for everyone from junior infants to sixth year but lots too for adults and families.
Dr Sheila Donegan is overseeing proceedings & says “We’re delighted to have the very first Science Week Festival in Kilkenny, it’s coordinated by Calmast, Waterford Institute of Technology STEM engagement centre but in partnership with Kilkenny council and in particular with Kilkenny libraries, we have been running events and science events for Kilkenny for a number of years but we’re delighted this year to have secured funding from Science Foundation Ireland to actually run the very first Kilkenny Science Week”.
Two key events are to the fore with local libraries as Dr Donegan adds “We’re going to be showing primary school pupils in an interactive workshop, again through zoom, how to make slime. Another really nice project that we’re doing with the libraries, there’s a lot of older people who are at home and we’re going to be bringing them some flower bulbs and we’re going to be giving the senior citizens some information on the science behind flowers and how to look after the bulbs to make beautiful, colourful flowers which gives a lot of hope, show how things are becoming much brighter when we get the flowers to grow”.
And how can you get involved? Dr Donegan says “We’ve over 40 events running, unfortunately everything has to be remote because of the Covid restrictions but not to worry because we’ve so many different, interactive things for all the family to take part in, all of the events are on stemkilkenny.ie, the events do need to be pre-booked, it’s all on eventbrite but the website is stemkilkenny.ie”.
For the full programme click here