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Denmark – Finland – France – Germany – Greece – Hungary – Ireland – Italy – Lithuania – Netherlands – Portugal – Romania – Spain – Switzerland – Turkey – United Kingdom

Curators: Shauna Kelpie & Jonathan Burgess

Inspired by Molly Bloom, the most famous female character created by James Joyce, the inaugural YES Festival will celebrate the diverse creativity of European and Irish female artists in a vibrant and varied programme of events, workshops and residencies to take place in Derry and Donegal in the north-west of Ireland 13^th – 16^th June 2024.

Local theatres, galleries, music venues, pubs and outdoor spaces across Derry and Donegal will host over 30 celebrated and emerging individual female artists representing Photography, Music, Documentary Film, DJs, Visual and Textile Art, Dance, Circus and Song in a festive cultural and spectacle filled weekend indoor and outdoor across the city of Derry and landscape of Donegal.

The European section of the YES programme seeks to encourage audiences and communities to connect with Derry ~ Donegal’s ULYSSES European Odyssey designated theme, The Future: A Female Vision Increasing local access to European creativity and artistic expression, alongside showcasing the contribution female artists make in highlighting social change as a core aim of the four day event.

The cities of Oulu, Vilnius, Marseille, Cluj and Copenhagen, Lisbon, Eleusis, Leeuwarden, Berlin, Dublin, Trieste, Lugo, Athens, Budapest and Istanbul have partnered with the creative producers at ARTS OVER BORDERS to identify female artists who embody the festival’s theme, THE FUTURE: A Female Vision.

1. Hanna Moisala, Oulu, Finland is a circus artist. Hanna will combine circus and physical theatre to create a highly visual performance in St Columb’s Hall using her exceptional artistry on the tight wire. Hanna says, ‘In all our shows, we want to tackle socially engaging themes around issues of power and questions that unite and divide human beings’. Hanna will also perform an outdoors spectacle using hula hoops and work with Derry’s local Circus school In Your Space to deliver a workshop for their young students.

2. Lilli Kuschel, Berlin, Germany will make a film consisting of interviews with local Derry women she randomly encounters as she explores the city over a few days in the lead up the YES Festival. Lilli will film, produce and edit the film whilst in Derry. The film will be available to be screened online and live as a final event for the festival.

1. Lilli Kuschel, Berlin, Germany will make a film consisting of interviews with local Derry women she randomly encounters as she explores the city over a few days in the lead up the YES Festival. Lilli will film, produce and edit the film whilst in Derry. The film will be available to be screened online and live as a final event for the festival.

1. Hanna Moisala, Oulu, Finland is a circus artist. Hanna will combine circus and physical theatre to create a highly visual performance in St Columb’s Hall using her exceptional artistry on the tight wire. Hanna says, ‘In all our shows, we want to tackle socially engaging themes around issues of power and questions that unite and divide human beings’. Hanna will also perform an outdoors spectacle using hula hoops and work with Derry’s local Circus school In Your Space to deliver a workshop for their young students.
2. Lilli Kuschel, Berlin, Germany will make a film consisting of interviews with local Derry women she randomly encounters as she explores the city over a few days in the lead up the YES Festival. Lilli will film, produce and edit the film whilst in Derry. The film will be available to be screened online and live as a final event for the festival.
3. Virginia Vassilakou and Fofi Tsesmeli  Eleusis, Greece, Virginia and Fofi will perform in one of Derry’s most iconic bars, Sandinos on Friday 14^th June. Virginia and Fofi will use the opportunity of the gig to promote the platform she said.so which aims to support, promote and empower women & gender non-conforming DJs and producers in the electronic music industry. Locally Virginia will deliver a workshop through Derry’s electronic music festival Celtronic to promote DJing to young women interested in the music industry.
4. Morta Joynait, Vilnius, Lithuania will exhibit her beautiful, fragile textiles in a bespoke setting which references Derry’s past connection to the textile industry. Morta describes her work as ‘Exploring the environment through tactility. Presenting my work in the form of installation, I construct intimate spaces where relationships between different experiences and participants are interconnected’. Morta’s work will be on displayed for a period of up to two weeks and one or two specific pieces from Derry’s past links to the textile industry will share the exhibition space. Morta would also like to display a piece in a current shirt factory building which has been repurposed.
5. Monika Bulaj, Trieste, Italy, is a Polish photojournalist, reporter, and documentary filmmaker based in Trieste Italy. Her work has been published in Granta, National Geographic, the New York Times Lens, TIME Lightbox, the Guardian, and elsewhere.  Monika will present elements of her stunning work in a theatre style, visual presentation. Using her own photojournalism she will draw links between photo reportage, cinema, poetry, theatre and literary writing. Monika will ask the audience to reflect on seeing reality, without transforming it, without influencing it and without lying. Monika will talk about the ethics in reportage and the moral issues of post-production and how technical and intellectual choices may transform the way of telling stories.
6. Gethan Quin, Marseille, France,  is a visual artist who will collaborate with her creative partner Myles to create a public participative dance piece celebrating the Derry Shirt Factory girls. Gethan & Myles plan Dance In! For the Yes Festival gethan&myles will present Dance In!, a joyous, generous, multi-generational homage to the Factory Girls made with and for the Derry/Londonderry community. The public space of the Guildhall Square and the Guildhall building itself are locations identified for this outdoor & indoor event. Collaborating with local dance groups Gethan hopes to encourage as wide a participation as possible celebration of the original ‘Derry Girls’. It is hoped the event will take place on Saturday afternoon 15^th June and that the sound of the Factory horns blaring will signal the start of Dance In!
7. Jolanda Bazzi & Laila el Bazi, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands are young, female, Fresian dancers who have been inspired by ‘The Derry Girls’ to choreograph a new and unique dance. Jolanda and Laila will create a site specific contemporary dance to be performed outdoors close to the iconic Derry Girls Mural. The sound track of the famous, award winning television show will feature throughout the piece and serve to connect audiences to the place and the dance.
8. Ioana Ofelia and Daniela Groza, Cluj, Romania said, ‘We consider ourselves queer visual activists’ and will produce a music performance for the Yes Festival, with live music (Ioana Ofelia) and visual projections (Daniela Groza), to represent the music of migration. The issue of migration and emigration are sore points in the history of the island of Ireland. It is hoped the piece will also be performed in Donegal, which due to rurality, still suffers from high level of economic migration.
9. Hanin Georgis, Copenhagen, Denmark in collaboration with Blaagaard Teatre will perform a one woman show entitled, ‘The Other Arab Woman’. This challenging live theatre piece explores the physical and emotional connection of traditional clothing worn by Arab women. This piece will be performed in a new theatre space Blue Gate Arts and for the first time in English in a special translation for YES Festival for audiences in Derry and Donegal.
10. Gizem Aksu, Istanbul, Turkey  will screen her award winning film 9/8 Fight for All at the Nerve Centre. Gizen and her three film co-stars will also come to Derry ~ Donegal to perform their distinctive choreography from the film in an outdoor public setting in Derry city and in Donegal.
11. Zoe de Souza and Philppe de Souza, Lisbon, Portugal are a father and daughterduo, who along with another classical guitarist will perform in concert a traditional repertoire of Fado music from the classical masters. In addition Zoe de Souza and her father Philippe de Souza will perform a contemporary piece, entitled ‘Le sigh du sable’, which brings together stories linked to fado, reinterpreted through dance, movement and sound.
12. Lugo, Spain – This event has been confirmed. The five dancers who performed in Lugo will come to Derry and replicate their dance-theatre performed reading of the Lestrygonians Episode VIII of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
13. Dublin, Ireland. We are back to the drawing board for Dublin and have put in a request for Gemma Dunleavy, a young, female singer who proudly sings about her working class background and life, living in inner city Dublin
14. Budapest, TBC, we are hopeful that the writer from Budapest will come and facilitate the the creation by local female writers of a book entitled, Derry in a Day.
15. Athens, Greece, TBC.

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