The first post on this shockingly neglected blog in a long time … and I’m looking for your help.

So many people have been working in recent days to pull together lists of Irish businesses that we can support during lockdown – here are some links to those:

• Sharon Leavy has put a heap of work into this Small Irish Business Christmas Gift Guide
• This thread by @grainnenics on Twitter has some great options
• There are lots of resources on justbuyirish.com
• Conor Pope is putting together a list for the Irish Times, starting with these 100 Irish retailers
• @rebekahcaulfield has listed over 250 Irish companies to support this Christmas over on Insta

I’m sure there are loads more, but anyway, that’s not why I’m here!

Separately, there are also so many people working hard, sometimes on a voluntary basis, but also commercially as they diversify their businesses, to deliver products and experiences online that will enhance our lockdown experiences or raise funds, or generally just make the next few weeks a bit more interesting.

Whether it’s live music, book clubs, online training, quizzes, art classes, literary events, make-up classes or workshops of any type, Halloween festivals and fun – there will be lots to see and do, and bite-size opportunities to learn over the next six weeks.

I wanted to put together a list, or calendar of things like these (taking place in Ireland please) that can be updated regularly for people to dip into, but it will be fairly rudimentary and I am looking for your help to make it as easy as possible.

Some examples:

So far I have:

• Dingle Literary Festival (workshops)
• Choose Sligo have sent on a list of links that I’m going to look at shortly
• Antonia’s Bookstore, The Maynooth Bookshop and Woodbine Books have teamed up to put this event on tonight.
• The Bram Stoker festival is putting on a great Halloween series with Macnas over four days next week.

I’ll pull these out in more detail for the main post once I have a bit more to work with. Now I need you to send me on interesting events/workshops/classes/craicworthy events taking place over the next few weeks.

How to submit an event

• Tag me on Twitter with a line describing your event and a link
• Leave a comment below with a line describing your event and a link
• Drop me an email here with with a line describing your event and a link.

Keep safe and well and hang in there, we will all get through this, even if everything feels a bit shaky and sad at the minute.