A group of Festival favorites are getting together to help fight hunger in Central Ohio.  Help them out by buying a ticket or making a donation. The event takes place at the Shamrock Club on Saturday May 9 at 5 p.m.

All proceeds will go to the Mid-Ohio Food Bank. 

Participating bands: Knot Fibb’n, Changeling, Ladies of Longford, members of the Drowsy Lads and Yankee Celtic Consort and Halfway Home

Tickets are $10. You can get them at the door – or you can buy them at Byrnes Pub, The Loft Violin Shop or at the Shamrock Club. I have a limited number as well if you want to contact me.

It’s been a busy couple of days in Irish Festival land.

Festival Food

Last Thursday (close enough to the weekend) we met to pick Festival food vendors. Our sweet tooths must have been in overactive mode because we only added three vendors, Fudgie Wudgie, Ritters Frozen Custard and a second Jeni’s Ice Cream location. We will be adding a few more “real food” vendors, but we are working on some space issues right now. Full list will be posted soon.

If you haven’t been to Jeni’s we are all pretty excited about their new location in Historic Dublin. It’s right on the south west corner of Bridge an High Street. One of our staff members told me at least someone in her family has been there almost every day since they opened last Wednesday.

Irish Festival Organizer Conference

Four Festival staff members spent a weekend in Kansas City trading ideas with our Irish Festival cousins from around the country and Canada. There were more than 2 dozen festivals represented including the Osh Kosh Irish Festival which will hold its first Festival at the end of May. Why not take a trip to Wisconsin to help them out on their first year. Their headliner is Gaelic Storm.

My fellow blogger and top Irish Festival designer (he designed the logo above), Dan Regan from Kansas City talks more about the conference on his Festival blog.

Marketplace & Emerald Isle

To round out the weekend, the Marketplace and Emerald Isle committee met yesterday to pick vendors. We had an amazing 95% return rate of vendors. We were a little surprised given the economy, but we know our Festival guests buy a lot of stuff every year.

We’ll get the full list up by the end of the week, but there are some new kilt vendors, AmeriKilt and Scotland Yard as well as a returning favorite, Utilikilt. Scotland Yard will finally help us answer the question where people can buy or rent a traditional wool kilt. All of this makes Mark, our committee’s kilt expert and wearer very happy – he tried to give all the kilt vendors a 6 on a 5-point scale, but we wouldn’t let him. This is the same guy who buys a new kilt if the volunteer t-shirt doesn’t match a kilt he already owns.

Some people bird watch, I’m car watching now. I saw my first DIF sticker on a car that wasn’t someone I know. Do you have your sticker yet?

A couple of weeks ago I ran into our Irish Festival photographer at a show at the LC downtown. We were both annoyed that neither of us was a VIP as we strained our necks to catch a glimpse of the artist. How can you avoid that feeling at this year’s Irish Festival?

Simple, sign up to be part of one of our VIP experiences.

If you just want special privledges for you and a friend, then you may want to look into being an Emerald Club member. Don’t wait too long on this one, we sold out weeks before the Festival and we definately will again this year. Plus, you get a discount if you sign up before June 1.

If you would like to invite 20-40 of your closest friends to be VIPs with you – check out Celtic Rock Club. There is no better view of the stage than from up high in these boxes. Again, don’t wait – Friday night is already sold out but there are some available for Saturday and Sunday.

If you read my last post – you’ll know that our intern, Amanda graduated – what does that mean to you …

We are looking for a new intern. If you are interested, you must apply here. It is listed as a Community Relations intern.

General requirements include being currently enrolled as a student in college or grad school and you must be at least Junior standing (this is non-negotiable!)

Ideally, we would like someone with some event experience and someone who is an event, PR or journalism major or related field.

The position will start on or around June 1 and will run through the summer. It may also be available in the fall.

What does our intern do? I guess a better question would be what doesn’t our intern do? We really try to make this a useful learning experience for our interns. We can’t guarantee you won’t make copies or coffee at some point (we all do), but we really try to have some interesting projects.

If you don’t meet these qualifications, but still want to help out with the Festival, stay tuned. We should have some other temporary-part time jobs posted soon.