Delta Air Lines Sponsors
Re-Imagining Ireland

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 
March 3, 2003

Charlottesville, VA – Delta Air Lines and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities today announced that Delta will be the official airline of the Re-Imagining Ireland conference and festival. Under a sponsorship arrangement, Delta will transport some 100 writers, journalists, politicians, performers, scholars, and citizen activists who will be featured at the May 7-10 event, a groundbreaking international “town meeting of Ireland,” out of Ireland.

Additionally, Delta will offer special promotions to those travelling from around the U.S. and overseas to attend the event, including discounted airfares to Charlottesville and Richmond, VA. The airline will award a free round-trip to Ireland for two to a registrant on the final night of the program. Complete information on Re-Imagining Ireland and Delta’s sponsorship can be found on-line at www.re-imagining-ireland.org.

“We are delighted by Delta’s generous support and confidence in the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Re-Imagining Ireland conference and festival,” says Robert C. Vaughan, President of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. “This extraordinary program on Ireland in a global context, developed by project Director Andrew Higgins Wyndham with ten outstanding Irish and American consultants, has also received major support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ireland’s Cultural Relations Committee, and the Anne Lee Ueltschi Foundation.”

To be opened by Ireland’s President, Mary McAleese, Re-Imagining Ireland will feature a wide range of arts and humanities activities, including 31 panel presentations and special events. Among the many outstanding guests are writers Frank McCourt and Roddy Doyle; politicians David Ervine, Liz O’Donnell, Michael D.Higgins, and Brid Rodgers; journalists Susan McKay, Fintan O’Toole, and David McKittrick; historians Joe Lee, Kerby Miller, Roy Foster, Tim Pat Coogan, and Mariann Elliott, and musicians Seamus Egan, Frankie Gavin, Joannie Madden, Mick Moloney, Tommy Sands, Bruce Molsky , Andy Irvine, and Len Graham and Pádraigín Ní Uallacháin. Concerts, film screenings, theater, contemporary art and other exhibitions, and poetry readings will illuminate discussions that explore Ireland’s culture, asking, “What does it means to be Irish now?”

Experts will plumb the complex relationship between economic growth and cultural change. Speakers will consider the special connections between Ireland and America, Ireland’s new status in the European Union, and the continuing story of worldwide Irish Diaspora. Exploring religious and political differences, both North and South, the event will foster social understanding and support the process of waging peace.

In addition to support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Ireland’s Cultural Relations Committee, the Anne Lee Ueltschi Foundation, and Delta Air Lines, major funding for Re-Imagining Ireland has been provided by the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism in Dublin; the Office of the President at the University of Virginia; the American Ireland Fund; Dominion Digital; Foras na Gaeilge, Dublin; Gropen Signs and Displays; The FUNd at the Charlottesville-Albemarle Community Foundation; the Charlottesville/Albemarle Convention & Visitors Bureau; ServerVault; Caterpillar; RBC Dain Rauscher; the Forum for Contemporary Thought (UVA); Caterpillar, the Milwaukee Irish Fest Foundation; and by Caroleen Feeney, Peter Sutherland, Richard and Marty Wilson, and other individual donors.

Institutional co-sponsors include Poetry Ireland, the Film Board of Ireland, the Cork International Film Festival, the Irish Centre for Migration Studies, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, and Glucksman Ireland House at New York University.

####