And so for Sligo, the dawn of a new year sees us say goodbye to a momentous one. There are not that many years in my lifetime where we can say Sligo had something going that kept us in the national eye all year… but 2015 was a bit different

For a number of years there had been the hope in the North West that #Yeats2015 – a planned year long celebration of the 150^th anniversary of the birth of ‘our’ poet – would be a focal point for a national and international interest in Sligo and its many charms.

It wasn’t a given – the man after all was born in Dublin and other places too laid claim to his attention at different times in his life.  However it turned out largely as we would have hoped.  An eclectic programme of events co-ordinated across the year, and across the country, allowed many people and places to honour his memory and his work while positioning Sligo as the anchor of his inspirations.

Those events varied from the daily lunch time readings down the pub, community readings and a recital in the private house where Yeats was born to a formal Government Cabinet meeting outside the capital – most unusual – in Sligo’s Lisadell House (where the poet was a regular visitor) and a Royal visit to his final resting place in Drumcliffe churchyard.

In Sligo, they didn’t just put him on a pedestal, they painted him on walls. Yeats appeal to other branches of the arts was reflected when The Waterboys took the stage at the annual Sligo Live* music festival following a similar previous celebration by Van Morrison in 2012, and evoking memories of Leonard Cohen reading Yeats at Lisadell in 2010

The year saw partnerships with the media and the commissioning of stamps. It saw Sligo covered in a range of international media; in the UK Yeats2015 managed to appeal to the diverse interests of both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mirror while in the US it caught the interest of the New York Times, not once, but four times.

So by many measures #Yeats2015 has been a success. It is being celebrated by Tourism Ireland as a contributor to the success of tourism nationally last year and, importantly in my view, there is a recognition, locally and nationally, that despite the competing priorities for investment the success of 2015 is a foundation worth building on.

The challenge now is to do so in a meaningful way. That won’t all be in Sligo but as his legacy is celebrated, so too must Sligo continue to connect with that celebration while building further its own connections. In the coming year, as the nation celebrates the centenary of 1916, Yeats’ contribution to the debate around the national question which took fire from the events following  the rising will be marked by a documentary fronted by Bob Geldof. The National Library’s excellent Yeats exhibition continues both on site in Dublin and on-line. In Sligo there is now a series of events to build around, from the ‘traditional’ Yeats International Summer School – now in its 57^th year – to the more recently launched ‘Tread Softly’ festival – a mixed programme of cultural events including theatre, exhibition, music, poetry readings, guided walks and talks – and  the now annual Yeats Day on June 13^th – a day of public celebration on his actual birthday.

So while #Yeats2015 was signed off in suitably iconic style via the pen of the redoubtable Annie West – a neighbour of the resting WB in North Sligo, for all of us that care about Sligo… the end of the year must just be the beginning.

*the writer is Chair of the board of the Sligo Live music festival