Sounds From A Safe Harbour: A Cork festival unlike any other

“It’s incredibly exciting, yeah. It really feels like it’s kind-of leveling up, y’know? And so are we, having to raise the bar ourselves, to meet it.” 

By the time your writer gets Sounds from a Safe Harbour director and co-curator Mary Hickson on the phone, it’s the beginning of the home stretch for the 2025 edition of the Cork-based arts festival, this year marking its tenth anniversary with an expansive lineup of music, performance and film, including the premiere of co-curator Cillian Murphy’s Steve, an opening ritual directed by folklorist Billy MacGloinn, and the return of the 37d03d (‘People’) artistic residency.

“It feels really important, this one, we’re super excited about everyone arriving, and so many conversations happening about what they want to do when they get here. And it’s lovely to be part of that creative process.”

That idea of a point of convergence is something of an understatement to say the least: luminaries in Irish music in Junior Brother and Dáithí are set to unveil a special collaborative album event; songwriter Ben Howard joins This is the Kit’s Kate Stables for a double bill; Rhiannon Giddens; electronic composer Jon Hopkins teams up with S. Carey for a special double piano show. On the billing are an acoustic performance from Villagers, the emergence of Lisa Hannigan as performer and curator, and appearances from Beth Orton, Amanda Bergman, Black Country New Road, Crash Ensemble, Sam Amidon among many others, including festival-closers Efterklang.

And it all opens with the aforementioned ritual at Elizabeth Fort, a ‘pagan rave’ featuring performers like Bobby Fingers, Brìghde Chaimbeul, Fish Go Deep, Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Neil Byrne, RÓIS, Sally Cinnamon and Súil Amháin, among many other residents and booked performers at the festival. That’s not even including a deep and varied programme of cinema exploring Irish folklore, including Manchán Magan’s Listen to the Land Speak. It’s a heady mixture, and the work of a lot of hands.

“We changed things up a little bit this year in that we added [author] Max Porter to the curatorial team, having had the experience he had at the last festival, myself and Cillian were like ‘he has to be part of our process, from now on’. Through the connections that I had made through [late musician] Eoin French I met Billy and became aware of his magic, his knowledge in the folklore space, but also as a creative and an artist. We decided two years ago that we wanted to invite him in to create something unique and special, ritualistic.

“Over the course of the ten years… we don’t do the festival every year, but there seems to be a greater, growing understanding of what it is we’re trying to achieve with this festival — we’re not a normal festival at all,” continues Hickson on the festival’s wider imprint. “I think it’s taken people some time to get their heads around this 37d03d concept, that if you see that on something, it means that it’s going to have been something that would either have been reworked or made from scratch in the week of the festival. A lot about what we will make and what we will present, we don’t have a clue of until everyone arrives, so there’s a leap of faith from the artist, but there’s also a leap of faith from the audience’s perspective.

“So when you announce a bunch of shows without giving a whole lot of information, and they sell out as quickly as they did, that gives us great faith that the audience is starting to understand us, and they’re invested. And like the whole point is that people take a risk, they try something new, they explore a new thing, and have a new experience. They’re up for that.”

“I only did it once, and it was maybe the biggest highlight I’ve ever had in my musical career,” says singer and songwriter Niamh Regan on her feelings going into this year’s festival, including collaborative gigging with Sam Amidon, as well as on Lisa Hannigan’s Sirens event. “I didn’t know what to expect from it, and I think I still don’t know what to expect for this year, it’s going to be a totally different bag. Going in for a whole week, surrounded by people you admire, and people you haven’t met yet, to share, make music and go to gigs, it’s pretty hard not to have a good time.

“But then, it’s not rushed either, which is such a luxury that I don’t think many musicians ever get to experience, that sense of like, ‘oh, you have a week here to put something new together and still not have much stress’. That’s all down to Mary Hickson and the whole team, that they just create, genuinely, a space to have good craic, feel you can be ambitious but relax at the same time. So I think it’s a credit to them. It’s really unique.”

“What else do you do at Safe Harbour?,” posits rapper and producer GodKnows on the nature of the festival, performing his debut Cork headliner as a solo artist on Friday, September 12.

“You don’t just go for one thing, because otherwise you’re missing the point. Safe Harbour is not a festival that is like any other, in my opinion. I know that already, going into it, but to be honest, that’s why I was so thrilled [to be asked along].”

Speaking on his relationship to the festival, he remarks on its importance to his growth as an artist. “It’s been life changing. Sounds from a Safe Harbour was when we first collaborated with other practitioners outside of what we do, which is rapping. We collaborated with some dancers, which culminated in a great performance, and which built our relationship and further solidified our relationship with the crew.”

As one-third of Rusangano Family at the time, GodKnows was among the performers at the festival’s first edition in 2015 — he tells a story about the hip-hop trailblazers’ set at the Kino. “One of the coolest things happened, somebody accidentally took the sound out of the speakers, so you could only hear the microphone, so the beat cut out when I was in the middle of one of the songs, one of the more rapid tracks, and I just said, ‘look, the show goes on’. And I kept spitting, and lo and behold, right at, like, the crescendo of that lyric, the beat came back, and it was as if nothing happened, and those things don’t happen every day. So I’ll never forget that moment, incredible. That will live with me for the rest of my life.

“Cork is one of, if not my favourite, places to play in Ireland, because the Cork audience is a listening audience, and is a participating audience… I guess the word is, Cork is a captive audience, and I always love that, because that means that all those hours that you put into the show are being recognised by the people that you practice for, the people that you make sure that you make these songs with everything for.”

It’ll be his first excursion to the quayside Nudes venue also, a space that’s rapidly gaining in importance to the developing cultures and creative communities in the city.

“I’ve heard only great things. I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of performing there yet, but I’ve heard only great things. A few of my mates from Cork were like, ‘yeah, that’s the venue, right there’.”

“I can’t wait,” enthuses Hickson on the run-up to this year’s instalment of the festival, and the buzz as that weekend approaches.

“Like, all of it is nonsense until these people are in a room together, none of it makes any sense, until we’re breathing the same air, feeling the energy and responding to each other. I’m communicating with everybody, and we’re like, ‘what about this, we could do that, have you listened to this?’ All that’s well and good until you’re actually standing in front of each other — and you never know what will happen.”

Sounds from a Safe Harbour festival begins on Thursday, September 11, and runs until Sunday, September 14, with a full programme of music, performance and film in multiple venues around Cork City.

For more information and remaining tickets, see https://soundsfromasafeharbour.com/