This October, Dundalk will ignite with Bold Frontiers, a brand-new urban festival celebrating music, arts, and contemporary culture. From October 10th to 12th, 2025, the town’s streets and landmark spaces will become a canvas for bold creativity, bringing together visionary artists, audiences, and communities for a weekend of discovery and connection.
Set against the historic backdrop of Ireland’s Ancient East, the festival will unfold across a constellation of iconic venues, including The Spirit Store, Mo Chara, Toales, Dundalk Gaol, St Nicholas Church, and An Táin Arts Centre. Each space will be transformed to host cutting-edge performances, immersive installations, and late-night gatherings, creating an unforgettable cultural trail through the heart of Dundalk.
A Festival of Connection and Discovery
Bold Frontiers is not just about showcasing art, it’s about reshaping how a town can feel over a single weekend. By crossing boundaries between music, art, and place, the festival invites visitors to see Dundalk differently: as a cultural hub with a raw, vital energy and a gateway to new experiences.
Festival organisers explain:
“Bold Frontiers is about exploring between genres, between spaces, and between communities. We want to create a festival that feels alive in the streets and venues of Dundalk, where audiences can stumble upon something unexpected and leave with a sense of having been part of something unique and unrepeatable.”
Line up:
• The Altered Hours
• Battleship Potemkin: Live Score with Rory Friers (And So I Watch You From Afar)
Arco Arena are an original Irish four piece post funk / dance-rock band from the currently vibrant music scene of Dundalk , County Louth, Ireland which has to date spawned such up-and-coming Irish artists such as The Mary Wallopers, Just Mustard, David Keenan, AE Mak and TPM.
Mixing an entirely unexpected original blend of heavy funk-focused shifting time signatures with straight up earworm hooks, described as the heavy riffage of bands like Idles, LaFaro, Rage Against The Machine, And So I Watch You From Afar, and Pixies crossed with the unstoppable danceyness of Foals, Battles, Chic, Adebisi Shank, Daft Punk, Fatboy Slim, Talking Heads and the funk stomp of Breakwater, The Bar-Kays, and Parliament Funkadelic their frenetic live shows are a rolling cascade of starting-never-stopping riffs, vivid lyricism and surprise mid-song trade offs between dual vocalists bassist Eoghan Maguire and guitarist Charlie Abbott, staccato interwoven instrumentals, and crowd singalongs.
They’ve performed at prestigious venues and festivals all over Ireland from The Spirit Store in Louth and the Roisin Dubh in Galway, to The Workmans Club in Dublin and Livestock Festival Galway and Skylite Festival in Down.
Currently on their 2024 Irish Tour, with a slew of self released singles and E.Ps under their belt, a debut album in the works, and their recognition and inclusion in RTE 2XM’s 2021 ‘‘Lockdown Livestream’’ and selection as 2024 finalists in Irish Music Week’s ‘‘A New Local Hero’’ Irish Talent competition the future looks extremely bright for Arco Arena in 2025.
