Sally Barnes Heads to Ballymaloe Festival of Food

Later this month, Sally Barnes will travel to the Ballymaloe Festival of Food for a special conversation exploring wild fish, traditional foodways, and the changing future of Ireland’s rivers and coastal communities.

Joining Sally on the Change We Must Stage will be chef and writer Aishling Moore and Irish Food Champion Anthony O’Toole for a discussion centred around heritage, sustainability, and the realities currently facing Ireland’s small-scale fishing communities.

The event will also feature a screening and discussion around The Keep — the documentary by BE.POLAR Studio exploring Sally’s life and work at Woodcock Smokery, and the deep relationship between fish, fire, landscape and tradition that has shaped over four decades of smoking wild fish in West Cork.

This year’s conversation carries particular significance. For the first time in decades, Sally has no access to wild salmon from the Blackwater River following recent government decisions to further restrict commercial fishing for wild salmon and sea trout, which have deeply affected the rural fishing communities connected to these waters.

More than a conversation about food, this gathering asks wider questions around memory, heritage, sustainability, and what kind of future remains for traditional food culture in Ireland.

The event takes place on Sunday, 17 May at 11.45 am on the Change We Must Stage at the Ballymaloe Festival of Food.

We hope to see some familiar faces there.