Who was involved in producing the work?
There were 16 writers, almost all whom, came from Fermanagh. There were two exceptions; one person who lives in England but had Fermanagh connections, and another man was American and he had met with the writers and we had saved a space for his work.
This is a creative community, people who get together, some with the Fermanagh Writers’ Group, others who meet to discuss and share poetry. We sometimes get together and have what we call a “Literary Breakfast”, where we sit beside a roaring fire and share our work and then we have breakfast.
When Conor Shields came to the event he was able to talk beautifully about community and creativity and how these things work together.
It does sound like you have a creative community working together?
Yes, it is quite organic though. Some of the connections have come through Community Arts Partnership’s writing workshops, some have come through creative connections, but all in all it is definitely a creative community.
Were you happy with the final outcome?
It was almost as if the art and the creative spirit took on a life of its own, despite the various situations, despite the elements, the art showed that sense of resilience that everyone felt or had experienced through that period.
It became a performance piece in the end, and people asked me afterwards, how was it possible to get 50 people to come to an exhibition of an installation, outdoors in the freezing cold with the storm rising and again I think it became something people wanted to be part of because of what it represented. The arts and the elements all came together to make it a very special occasion.
It wasn’t advertised, it was all done by word of mouth, and so yes I was very pleased with the final outcome.
Where to now?
Hopefully, all going well, we will produce a book with all the writings in it and the photos of the installation. We won’t have a lot of explanation, it will maintain that sense of minimalism, we will let the words and the photographs speak for themselves.
We will let the importance and the power of the art, produced, especially, in periods of great difficulty, reveal itself to the viewers.