Students at three schools in Claregalway and Annaghdown have been using their imaginations constructively over the past week as Gaeltacht an Eachréidh teamed up with the Galway Cartoon Festival to put on a series of cartooning workshops ‘as Gaeilge’.

The artist Caoimhe Lavelle, who is a fluent Irish speaker, travelled to Galway for the six day festival and teamed up with Ciaran Tierney of Gaeltacht an Eachréidh again to put on enjoyable cartooning workshops in local schools.

Caoimhe travelled out to Claregalway College to oversee a 90 minute cartooning session with a group of second year students who have shown great promise in using our native language on the first day of the festival.

The students also travelled into the city centre to visit some of the exhibitions during the festival which is celebrating its tenth year in 2026.

The second years visited the Town Hall Theatre, Plámás Café, Bell Book and Candle, and Charlie Brynes bookshop to check out the cartoons before the festival ended on Tuesday.

They also enjoyed a second workshop with Caoimhe in the education room at the Galway City Museum on Tuesday afternoon, where Ciaran told them about the ‘Cartoon Challenge’. Each participant on the workshop had to come up with a comic book over the course of an hour.

The second years now have just over two weeks to enter the ‘Cartoon Challenge’ in which judges from the Galway Cartoon Festival will choose three winners who have put the most effort into their cartoons.

This competition has been a huge hit with students at Coláiste Bhaile Chláir over the past three years.

During the festival, Caoimhe also ran cartooning workshops with sixth class at Scoil Naomh Breandán, Annaghdown, and both fifth and sixth class at Carnmore National School.

It was fantastic to see the talent among budding young artists in Gaeltacht an Eachréidh.

 

 

Cartún le Donal Casey ag Aras Eanna, Inis Oirr, mar pairt d’Fhéile Cartún na Gaillimhe.