Cork Lifelong Learning Festival’s cross-border mural project

Our water station on Horgan's Quay this year is going to have the wonderful backdrop of a newly painted mural!

Inspired by the Titanic, the mural forms the backdrop for Water Station 2. It was painted last month by a group of eight young unemployed men, four each from Cork & Belfast.

This cross-border mural project is part of the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival’s twinning with Féile an Phobail in West Belfast, and is supported by Cork City Council and Co-operation Ireland.

During 2011 the Mahon Men’s Art Group worked with artists from Belfast to paint a mural next to Blackrock Castle – close to Water Station 6.  Last August that group were guests at Féile, where they created a mural on Northumberland Street, off the Falls Road, which includes Cork City’s coat of arms, Christy Ring & Roy Keane.

Just last month two mural artists, Frank Quigley & Michael Doherty, travelled to Cork with four young unemployed men, Ryan Smyth, Christopher Amos, Corey Keenan and Dominic Moreland, drawn from across different communities in Belfast.  They worked with four young unemployed men from Mahon – Sam Carroll, brothers Alex & Reese Ahern and Jonathan O’Mahony. Only Jonathan was involved last year; for all the others painting a mural was a totally new experience – and they loved it.

Artist Michael Doherty has been painting murals for more than 20 years. “All of us in the Belfast Artists’ Collective are self-taught, we’ve learned from our mistakes. When we’re working on a mural we try to localise it, include references that people can identify with, so they feel involved. That’s probably why murals aren’t vandalised – because locals feel they belong to them. Here we looked at the Cobh and Cork connections with the Titanic.”

For more information:

on the mural project - Viv Sadd at Mahon CDP  085 801 5885;

on the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival – Tina Neylon 086 603 5552

Back to list