Vincent Hanley Summer School: The Music Legacy

Rockin’ the 80s

Vincent Hanley Summer School: A Discussion on Vincent Hanley and LGBTQ+ Rights with Tonie Walsh and Guest Speakers

As a young gay man, Vincent was emblematic of a newly emboldened generation of LGBTQ+ people that left an indelible mark on a society grappling with change and modernity. Ireland’s first celebrity AIDS death, Vincent Hanley deserves to be defined by more than just the manner of his passing, as culturally significant as it was. Vincent’s life and times, especially the 1980s, will spark the evening’s discussion, exploring the AIDS pandemic and its casualties with all the necessary candour, empathy and critical thinking that the catastrophe demands.

Since his death in 1987 and despite his iconic status, Vincent has not been given the critical attention he deserves beyond a couple of TV and film documentaries. Tonie Walsh (civil rights activist and curator of the Irish Queer Archive) is joined by Dr Páraic Kerrigan (Professor in Media Studies at UCD and author of Reeling in The Queers) and Anna Nolan, current chair of the National LGBT Federation and former Big Brother contestant, seek to right this imbalance, exploring Vincent’s legacy while also endeavouring to make sense of the extraordinary change in Irish society in the intervening years.

With live music from Garage Inc.