Every year since 1991 an Irish traditional music festival – Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane – has been held in the small rural town of Tocane Saint Apre in the Dordogne region of south-west France, some 140 kilometres east of Bordeaux, and thousands of people have attended it since its inception.

As part of its work of documenting Irish traditional music worldwide, and of learning about the globalisation of the music that has been ongoing for the last half-century, the Irish Traditional Music Archive began an experimental cooperative project with Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane in 2014, with the aim of gathering sound and video recordings, and photographs and paper ephemera, which had been made by participants over the years. Presented here are some of the images that the Archive has received from the festival organisers and various participants.

The Archive would welcome further donations of images, or other material relating to the festival.

With thanks to Terry Moylan, Fintan Vallely, Mary Kelly and the organisers of the festival for their donation of the images shown.

ITMA have received many recordings of the proceedings of Rencontres Musicales Irlandaises de Tocane. These recordings document the festival format over the years and also the people who performed there. They are all available for reference in the Archive and a selection from 2010 is presented here.