All Together Now 2024

Background

For the first time, 2024 saw The Global Solidarity Hub at the All Together Now Music Festival, bringing together the collective missions and values of Trócaire, GOAL, Sightsavers Ireland and Worldview (Dóchas).  

The All Together Now Music Festival is known for bringing together artists, activists, and community organizations in a shared space to celebrate creativity and advocacy. The GSH partnered with festival organizers and brought four INGO’s into a shared space, combining resources and expertise to ensure global justice, human rights, disability inclusion and climate action were key themes across the festival’s programming. This collaboration allowed the GSH to tap into the festival’s diverse, socially conscious audience, promoting global solidarity while aligning with the festival’s values of sustainability and community engagement. 

Weekend Programme

All Together Now is Ireland’s largest independent festival and winner of the IMRO 2024 Festival of the Year award. The festival strives to create an enchanting, all round experience for attendees, and welcomes music lovers, mavericks, creators, families, and curious minds alike for a weekend of exploration and togetherness. At ATN, the Hub achieved deeper engagement through a programme of interactive activations, meditations, panel discussions, workshops, and performances.

The Global Solidarity Hub at the Curious Minds Arena brought together some of the leading practitioners and the greatest minds working for the advancement of global social justice, incorporating areas such as climate activism, inequality, disability inclusion, solidarity, and education. The full programme of workshops, discussions, interactive exhibitions, and guest artists performing throughout the weekend aimed to create an atmosphere of conversation, debate and solidarity, encouraging festival goers to be inspired to take meaningful action for the issues that matter to them. 

Organisation Activations

Dóchas - Worldview:

Worldview at the Global Solidarity Hub was exploring visual storytelling and how imagery ignites emotions and drives action. The activity reflected the wider Wave 5 quantitative and qualitative research on imagery. Worldview’s stacked imagery boxes displayed debranded images taken from Dóchas members campaigns. Images were debranded to isolate the effect of the image, not the organisation ‘brand’. From heart-warming moments to thought-provoking scenes, the images depicted people of various ages, genders, and contexts, and captured a wide array of emotions. Visitors were asked to vote which was their favourite image, which image they would like to learn more about, and which image evoked the most emotions. This was to better understand what kinds of images resonate with the public. Participants were also asked what their ‘Worldview’ was, pinning it up on the ‘What's your Worldview’ board, giving them a moment to reflect on their space as a global citizen. 

Trócaire

The objective of Trócaire’s participation was to raise awareness of climate justice and human rights, particularly among young adults, and to inspire festival-goers to take action on these issues in their daily lives. The Global Solidarity Hub sought to solidify the link between local environmental concerns and global challenges, encouraging festival-goers to see themselves as part of the solution. 

Sightsavers Ireland

Sightsavers Ireland brought VR headsets showcasing a four minute long video of a day in the life of school-going Ndiambe from Senegal who lives with a visual impairment. Viewers were asked their perception of life with a disability in Ireland, in West Africa and the importance of disability inclusive development was highlighted. Materials featuring Braille, our schools workshops and other talking points such as cataract simulator glasses also featured for discussion points and engagement.  The overall goal of participation was to increase awareness and understanding of disability inclusive development, Ireland’s overseas development work and promote empathy, tolerance and inclusion.

GOAL

The aim of GOAL's participation in the Global Solidarity Hub was to encourage young people in Ireland to understand the diverse and interconnected nature of our world while critically interrogating the systems that perpetuate inequalities and reflect upon their own role/role of others in tackling these challenges. GOAL inspired festival goers to engage in these conversations in the spirit of empathy, inclusivity, solidarity and collaboration with participants being encouraged to develop courage, confidence and resilience to speak out for change, and work alongside GOAL to take actions as global citizens in pursuit of a sustainable, resilient and inclusive world. GOAL used engagement tools including a life-size Snakes & Ladders quiz on a range of topics including climate action, food security and global inequality as well as the Welcome Wall, asking participants to contribute what makes them feel like they belong to the wall. 

Key Takeaways

All Together Now is a holistic festival known for its celebration of creativity, art and culture, offering a perfect setting for the GSH to engage through interactive installations, music and storytelling.  

The festival already has a focus on environmental sustainability, so a global solidarity message about climate change, food security, and human rights fitted seamlessly into the ethos of the event. Festival-goers are primed to think about the intersections of their own lives with global justice issues, particularly when presented in creative and compelling formats, meaning the Hub provided a space for attendees to relfect on their space in the world.

Music and art are powerful tools for cross-cultural exchange, which the Hub successfully harnessed and channelled. Through performances, storytelling, and art related to global justice, the GSH fostered empathy, highlighting the importance of solidarity and creates a global movement for change. 

Over the course of the weekend, over 580 festival goers chose to come in, interact, think, and enjoy the Hub. The Global Solidarity Hub saw first-hand the impact that can be achieved bringing collective experiences together, with festival goers choosing the Hub as the place to spend their time while getting inspired and empowered to take action for a fairer world.

As expressed by Leon Diop, the co- founder of Black & Irish, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone...If you want to go far, go All Together Now.’

The Global Solidarity Hub – Creating a difference.