Some of the Kilkenny Arts Festival’s Secret Garden Series events have been cancelled due to the heat

Kilkenny Arts Festival has announced it’s cancelling some performances because of the weather conditions.

The Secret Garden Series event scheduled for 3 o’clock this afternoon at Stone Circle, Butler House is going ahead.

But today’s 4pm performance at the Heritage Council Garden with the 2pm and 4pm offerings on both Friday and Saturday will not be taking place as temperatures soar under a yellow alert from Met Eireann.

For now though, Sunday’s event in Mount Juliet is going ahead as planned – updates will be issued via KCLR as well as on Kilkennyarts.ie

Festival Director Olga Barry says it’s not a position they expected to be in, telling KCLR News; “We’re used to cancelling for hurricanes, thunderstorms, yellow alerts for flooding, we’ve never had to cancel anything due to heat I mean it’s great that people are able to enjoy the good weather and so on but it’s just our secret gardens, the lovely free pop-ups that we do twice a day in the afternoon, it’s in the interest of safety for the audience to be sitting out in the sunlight and that since the yellow alert’s been issued and also for musicians with instruments who, those instruments can’t cope with that heat outdoors”.