Woman
Fermanagh born and East-Clare raised, Conni Dawson has been performing in Ireland for over a decade and travels the length and breadth of the island playing music and telling stories.
Growing up in a musical family Conni was surrounded by instruments from an early age, and can play with varying degrees of ability the tin whistle, banjo, mandolin, piano and harp.
Despite a life-long love of music, she pursued other paths in education, studying both fashion design and landscape architecture in the pursuit of a way to combine her passion for environmentalism and sustainability with a creative occupation.
Harper
Conni took up the harp at 18 years old. With no teachers to hand she taught herself how to play and has gone from strength to strength, recording four albums of Irish music, over a hundred music videos, playing at weddings, tea ceremonies, markets, festivals and more.
Her first love, however, is busking. As a nervous new player she sat down in Ennis in 2013 and has been irredeemably in love with street performance ever since. Travelling up and down the country she performs in towns and cities, bringing a smile to people’s faces and some soothing music to the streets of Ireland.
Storyteller
In 2018, in a small sleepy tent, on a Sunday morning at Electric Picnic, Conni saw a storytelling performance that changed her life (storytelling means you’re allowed hyperbole).
She walked out of that tent determined to be on that stage some day. Since then she has trained with renowned Irish storytelling duo Candlelit Tales and performed in venues around the country both in one-off events and her annual Storylines tour.