The Week: Carlow’s Arts Announcements, Brewing in Kilkenny and a star among us

You’re reading The Week on KCLR, highlighting some of the stories you may have missed on-air and online.

These past seven days we’ve been hearing about a world-class bartender with Carlow Kilkenny roots and how local produce has helped elevate him to the global stage.

We broke the news of how star of stage and screen Rupert Everett has moved to County Carlow and that was fast-followed by the reveal of Carlow Arts Festival’s 2021 programme launch which boasts something of a first for Ireland.

As the country slowly opens up, we talk with a psychotherapist about the Pandemic.

While housing’s been hitting headlines too, then there’s Carlow’s BRAUN site and claims it’s been sold.

And there’s more from Kilkenny’s famed Smithwick family and brewing locally.

As always, you can join our news team across the day, seven days a week, read the stories on kclr96fm.com and scoreline.ie or take us with you on the KCLR app.

Exciting Arts

The Borris Festival of Writing and Ideas Spring Series kicks off this Wednesday with County Carlow’s newest resident Rupert Everett as we exclusively revealed on Monday’s News – more on that here.

And if you know somebody who’s thinking of following in his footsteps, our star reporter Shauna McHugh decided to find out how to relocate with June Doran Properties for This is How We Do It on KCLR Live:

And there was more exciting news this week with the reveal of the 2021 Carlow Arts Programme – details of that here

Housing Headlines

One of the largest properties on the local market, Carlow’s Braun site, is still up for sale despite many rumblings this week to the contrary.  KCLR News quashed those rumours but discovered it may not be available for much longer – read about that here

But it was housing that was very much to the fore this week with senior politicians sharing mixed views on the potential of banning investment funds from buying up residential property – details here

Then we heard of a new estate set to be built in one county Kilkenny area – more on that here

While Kilkenny Councillor David Fitzgerald joined our Sue Nunn on The Way It Is to discuss the accessibility of affordable housing:

A Pandemic and the Psychologist

Edward Hayden spoke to The Saturday Show‘s resident Psychotherapist Mags Bowen about the recent lifting of restrictions and how we can mind our minds during these new times …

Brewing in Kilkenny

We outlined previously how devastated a number of people were following the announcement by Diageo that it was to permanently close its Smithwick’s Experience on Parliament Street in Kilkenny City.

A member of the Smithwick family last weekend joined our Edward Hayden on The Saturday Show for a follow-up chat:

Then on Tuesday evening, another Smithwick, this one with Sullivan’s Taproom on John Street, told KCLR of how that company’s set to bring brewing back to Kilkenny City.  Read about that here and listen to the piece on The History Fix with MaryAnn Vaughan:

Mixing It

Our Sue Nunn’s been catching up with a leading bartender, who has ties to Carlow and Kilkenny.

Cal Byrne was this week declared the Diageo Reserve’s World Class Bartender Of The Year 2021 and is now set to compete at the finals, hosted by Madrid.

His mixers include ingredients from another entity linked to our locality, Beotanics.

Listen back to the chat from The Way It Is here:

Catch Up

There’s plenty more from across the week here on KCLR.

You’ll find our news stories here while regular key features from programmes covering a range of topics, including travel, fitness, health care, as well as repeats of our talk shows and more can be found in our Catch Up section.

Best of all, you can read and listen to everything in the KCLR app.