Cultural Companions - Come Together

Hawk’s Well Cultural Companions was an initiative set up in 2019 with the aim of providing increased opportunities for older people to engage with Sligo’s vibrant cultural and arts scene by setting up a network of people who would accompany each other to cultural events at the theatre.

Our closure in 2020 and the fact that older people had been cocooning during lockdown inspired us to revisit this project. We felt that in such uncertain times, connecting with and supporting each other in new ways has became more important than ever before. We wanted to embrace connectivity with older people who were cocooning alone, while supporting our treasured artists at a difficult time.

We paired four local artists with four older people (hosts) who were cocooning alone during lockdown. Over the course of the project the paired artist and host got to know each other through a series of conversations, after which the artist wrote an original piece of work inspired by the host and their conversations together.

We hope you will enjoy listening to our artists and their companions sharing their experiences and to the four wonderful pieces that were created from these new friendships.