Handle with Care: Irelands Amateur Stage Online Exhibition

Handle with Care: Ireland’s Amateur Stage is an online exhibition from TUS Library Archives & Special Collections exploring how fragile records of Ireland’s amateur drama heritage are cared for, preserved and shared.

Drawing on the Brendan O’Brien Collection, the project focuses on the paper trail left behind after performance: programmes, posters, tickets, correspondence, photographs, reports and handwritten notes. These records preserve evidence of local creativity, festival life, community networks and the people involved in Ireland’s amateur stage.

Created for National Heritage Week 2026, the exhibition responds to the theme of Heritage at Risk by showing how easily paper-based heritage can be lost, damaged, discarded or separated from its context. It also highlights the practical work involved in protecting this material, including receiving collections, organising records, rehousing fragile items, creating metadata, digitising selected material and sharing records online.

Through images, short interpretation and links to related resources, the project invites visitors to look beyond the performance itself and consider the care needed to keep cultural memory accessible for future generations.