Al is a poster boy for business in Cork city

“I REMEMBER one guy messaged, saying ‘I really needed to see this today’.”

Al Dalton is speaking about a series of handwritten posters with positive messages he put up around Cork city during the pandemic - and the effects they had on people as they grappled with the restrictions and anxieties of the time.

“It was two o’clock in the morning, and you think to yourself, why is someone out by themselves at that time?” adds Al of that particular message.

“That could have been that one positive thing that person needed to see in that moment.”

It’s been a strange business journey for Al.

In 2019, he took over the family business, a billboard advertising company based in Cork city. The pandemic was just around the corner. Like many business owners, Al faced huge problems.

“I won’t even tell you how many euros I lost,” he laughs.

“The company traditionally made their money advertising gigs and plays around Cork, but as they were cancelled, around 200 billboards lay empty.

“I was left with a whole load of negative space across the city, with nothing to fill them.”

Then Al had a brainwave, that would turn those negative spaces into positive ones.

“At that time everyone needed to see public displays of collaboration, everyone needed to know that everything was going to be OK,” he recalls.

Dalton decided to use the empty spaces to promote positivity, putting up posters with messages designed to make people smile, containing messages such as ‘Dogs are just great’, and

The company rebranded from Poster Displays Ltd to Notes To Cork, a creative design studio, in an attempt at giving themselves a voice.

Al has a background in theatre and the creative arts, and leaned on this to develop ideas. The pandemic offered a unique opportunity and an almost endless supply of material to create new posters.

“The development of the business kind of happened simultaneously with the lifting and reinforcing of pandemic restrictions, whether it be you’re only allowed 2km from your home, or 5km, or to your county borders,” he says.

A sense of community is key to what Dalton is trying to accomplish with Notes to Cork.

He has used his background in the arts to collaborate with local artists, starting an initiative called Public Inspirational Panels to provide posters to display around the city.

The panels add colour to a city which, like many in Ireland, has its fair share of dereliction, and Dalton believes anything which can give Cork a sense of place should be welcomed.

“I think the pandemic has led to a lot of people wanting to have a bit more ownership over their city,” he says. 

“Everything begins with a conversation and pieces of art, be it a mural, a poster, or even an interesting piece of graffiti, can be a conversation starter.”

Cork City Council have funded street art projects which have seen large scale murals painted on public bulidings, and have plans to fund more.

“It’s been amazing seeing those artworks go up around the city, especially in identifying certain parts of the city,” Dalton says. “People do become proud of what’s on their doorstep.”

Alongside creating a sense of pride amongst locals, Dalton believes that public art offers a city the chance to become more interesting and memorable for tourists.

“People do understand when there’s been a level of thought put into something,” he says. “Art is a great way to visually communicate that.

“A tourist can walk around the whole city in a couple of hours, and if they come across a lot of those murals, they’ll be able to understand that these are dots of a larger connection.”

“You begin to understand that this is part of a point that the city wants to communicate.

“That was my thinking with the billboards, that because we operate so many sites, you can come across three or four that are saying or showing you something, you’re intrigued to know more and find out what it’s trying to tell you.”

Now that gigs and plays are back, traditional revenue streams are returning for Notes to Cork, and it would be easy to go back to the old way of advertising, but not for Dalton, who is based in Douglas Street.

“The work where we are supporting community and local artists is integral to our vision going forward,” he insists.

“For me it’s about a more holistic approach to out-of-home advertising.”

And for those who need to see a positive message at 2am, the plan is to keep them coming.