A Song of Resilience is Creative Ireland Project, supported by Birr Music Festival and Music Generation Offaly and Westmeath and continues my explorations of routine and the generation of iconography.
The piece investigates the adoption of a new vocabulary and the production of contemporary folklore during the pandemic. The work begun with discussions in schools and senior care facilities over new cleansing rituals and phrases- (zoom, lockdown, cocoon) which have dominated our lives.
The conversations were gathered as words and phrases, and the children produced drawings. These, along with my response in the form of my own illustrated responses, were gathered into a publication.
Concurrently, I adopted the words into a song. With the aid of Music facilitators, Ann Cambridge and Triona Walshe, the song was taught, through an intensive three day workshop, to Birr Young voices children choir who performed the piece, accompanied by an animated video, in Birr Theatre and Arts Center
