Creativity and Us

A Celebration of the Creativity of Polio Survivors

‘CREATIVITY AND US’  A Look Behind the Scenes

It all started with a remark by Eamonn Farrell, our Chief Executive, that there seemed to be a lot of talent among our members. That got me thinking about how we could bring all this creativity into one place and have an exhibition. Then the idea of publishing a companion book to ‘Polio and Us’ took hold, and it took off from there.

Of course the first big stumbling block was the funding and this project had to be self-funding. Always the eternal optimist, I set about enquiring into the various funding bodies which might come up with the money including the Arts Council, HSE Arts and Health Programme, Sligo Co. Council, CAWT, and People in Need. We got some negative and some positive replies to our request, but we were successful in getting enough funding for the first part of the project - the exhibition. I am still awaiting word from the People in Need Organisation, and if they agree to assist us, we may also have enough funding for phase two - the companion publication to Polio and Us.

Sligo Co Council Arts Service were extremely helpful in showing us how to go about putting an exhibition together – they also offered to assist with hanging the exhibition in the Primary Care Centre in Sligo for three weeks as part of the Bealtaine Festival of Creativity in Older Age, which was right after our Conference/AGM in April.

Letters went out to all members asking for expressions of interest and we were delighted that 40 members said they would like to take part, including members of Polio Fellowship N. Ireland which brought a nice cross-border element to the project. We arranged collection points around the country and eventually the paintings started to arrive in my house. Each painting I opened was wonderful – I was, and still am, amazed at the talent!

Then we had to organise stands and hooks and hanging string, screw eyes and name tags. We found an artist who agreed to help us to hang them to best advantage. Then we had to think of the craft items which people were to bring with them to the Conference. Each item was unique and special, from bog oak carvings to wood-turnings, from tapestries to knitting, from embroidery to poetry, and we even discovered that we had seven published authors among our membership. We engaged the services of a professional photographer to take photos of all the exhibits and the exhibitors, and these will form part of the publication, which hopefully and depending on funding, will be undertaken before the end of the year.

Many thanks to all the exhibitors for allowing us to share in their wonderful talents, and to everyone who assisted us to bring this exhibition to fruition, it is a credit to one and all.

Paula Lahiff