With the Baboró Festival coming to a close for another year, programme director Lali Morris has time to reflect on her move to Ireland, her passion for the arts and what's ahead for the group in 2008.

Lali Morris' previous career as a primary school teacher has equipped her with patience, understanding and an insight into what children need. This has ensured that she has excelled over the last number of years as programme director with children's arts festival, Baboró.

Lali grew up in Los Angeles and, although she originally went down the teaching route, she has always had a passion for the arts. During her time in America, she worked as a director and actress in LA, Chicago and Iowa as well as running a children's theatre.

However, love brought her to Ireland when her husband Ted Turton was offered the position of Artistic Director with the Galway Arts Festival. Having spent a number of summers in Ireland, Lali didn't hesitate in moving across the water and quickly settled into Galway's creative community.

"The people of Galway welcomed us with open arms and we felt at home straight away. Moving to Galway was a big transition, but there are a lot of similarities between California and the West. When we moved over in 1995, Ireland was going through an economic boom and it was like I had seen it all before. People were getting married and having children later, house prices were going up, it was déjà vu because the same thing had happened in America in the years before."

After moving to Galway, Lali began working in performing arts and with the children's club, Marbles. Because of her background in children's arts, she was invited to join the board of directors at Baboró in 1997 and took over as programme director four years later.

"We came at the right time. There was a growing population and a growing interest in arts, and we were able to cater for that. I think it is really important that children get the opportunity to be involved in arts and that their creative streaks are nurtured. We are also trying to work with the parents to encourage their children to get involved with the arts," she says.

Lali has now moved out to Athenry, but admits to missing the atmosphere of the city.

"Where we are living at the moment is beautiful, but I do miss the buzz of the city. We used to live near the Claddagh, which was great. It was quite noisy but we used to throw water balloons at the people outside to make them keep quiet!" she says.

Outside of work, Lali prefers to stay at home and cook rather than go out. She also likes to keep fit by dancing and going to the gym. In the next year, she hopes to return to doing some more teaching as well as developing next year's festival.

"I have been spending a lot of time organising events for the last while, so I would like to get back to doing some more teaching. We have received a lot of invitations from festivals all over the world so we will go to visit some of them to line up performers for next year. It's very easy to persuade people to come over for the Baboró festival because everybody wants to come to Galway!"

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