Arts Over Borders was established to deliver international world class literary-led multi arts festivals inspired by the work, life and influences of Irish literary giants associated with the region through birth, schooling, or life. Nobel Laureate Samuel Beckett (Fermanagh), Ireland’s greatest dramatist of the second half of the 20th century attended Enniskillen’s Portora School as did the infamous Oscar Wilde. In September 2018 Arts Over Borders was part of a four-nation consortium, Spot-lit, that gained funding for a Literary Tourism project celebrating Enniskillen as the home of The Happy Prince, the story written whilst Wilde attended Portora.

Background to Spot -lit Project

The untapped potential of literary tourism (LT) is the focus of Spot-lit, a three-year project that aims to grow the literary tourism sector in the area known as the Northern Periphery and Arctic region. The aim of the programme is to support businesses and communities in this culturally rich region to grow, collaborate and engage audiences more effectively together to enhance Literary Tourism and economic activity. The project runs until March 2022. Funded by the EU INTERREG Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme, the regions participating in the Spotlit programme area are Northern Ireland and border counties Co. Cavan and Co. Monaghan, West of Ireland, Eastern Finland, and South-West Scotland. Literary Tourism is an emerging niche sector within the wider cultural tourism sector, where places with literary heritage offer author and fiction-related literary tourism opportunities, along with opportunities arising from literary festivals, trails, and book shops. In Northern Ireland, this would include literary rich locations such as Enniskillen, synonymous with the schooldays of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett Arts Over Borders will be contributing to the development of the four Pilot Projects, in particular Wilde Island Town (WIT) in Enniskillen (NI) and this invitation to Tender is in respect of that Pilot Project.

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