LIMERICK foodies will be mourning the loss of one of the county’s most loved annual food festivals after the announcement came this week that the Pigtown Festival will not be returning in 2024.
The news was broken this Tuesday (September 17) in a statement on behalf of Pigtown Festival organiser the Limerick Food Group, who said that it had never intended to facilitate the festival this year, instead claiming to have handed it over to Limerick City and County Council.
Signed by Fine Gael councillor Olivia O’Sullivan and well-known Limerick chef Tom Flavin, the statement confirmed that, after seven years, the Limerick Food Group would no longer be running the Pigtown Festival.
The statement said that Limerick Food Group informed Limerick City and County Council in March 2023 that, “due to resource challenges in our reduced volunteer committee”, it could no longer keep the festival going.
The festival organisers said they were “asked to try to deliver a festival for 2023 if possible, and we did that, stretching our small volunteer team, holding a successful Pigtown weekend with the understanding that the Council was going to take it on this year in 2024”.
“In the spring of this year, we contacted the Festivals and Events Office of Limerick City and County Council, reminding them that we would not be in a position to run Pigtown 2024 and offered our availability to discuss and assist in a handover,” O’Sullivan and Flavin wrote.
“Less than two weeks out from the festival weekend, the Council informed us that the street theatre company in discussion to run the Pigtown Parade had withdrawn, so the parade would not be going ahead on Culture Night.
“Furthermore, no work had taken place to date on programming the food element of the festival. Resource issues were cited, with all resources being diverted elsewhere in the preceding period.”
When asked for comment on the festival’s axing, and the possibility of it being revived under its own remit or by new management, a spokesman for Limerick City and County Council said that “the team at Limerick City and County Council share Limerick Food Group’s disappointment in relation to the Pigtown Festival”.
The spokesman said the Council was “made aware that the Limerick Food Group were not in a position to run the festival in 2024 and had allocated some resourcing to deliver elements of Pigtown for 2024, however not all of these were achievable”.
“Limerick City and County Council has provided some funding to the Pigtown Festival this year to help continue the festival name and as part of Limerick City and County Council’s ongoing efforts to promote Limerick’s world class food offering”.
Despite disavowing the festival this year, Limerick Food Group will be taking part in a number of reduced events at the Milk Market across the weekend, including a ‘Little Pigtown’ event on Culture Night (September 20), cooking demonstrations with Chef George Casey on Saturday, and an ‘Art of Pigtown’ fair on Sunday.
