WATCH: Cork's Lord Mayor: 'I met more than 35,000 dynamic young people'
School visit by Lord Mayor Cllr Kieran McCarthy at Scoil Aiseiri Chriost GNS, Knockpogue Avenue, Farranree. Pupils and staff with the Lord Mayor at the school on Thursday 28th September 2023. Pic Larry Cummins
REACHING the end of a 117-school visit programme has left me humbled, emotional, and exhausted from a rollercoaster of meeting so many young people on mass but also full of great memories for years to come. To meet the bones of over 35,000 dynamic young people or Cork’s up and coming generation, complete with teachers and principals of city schools, is one of the largest projects on democracy development each Lord Mayor takes on every year.
There was on average five visits every morning for 25 days. Each visit is lively peppered with a mass of pride, heritage, songs, speeches, dancing, laughter, tears, applause – such emotions run deep within the heart of our city and bubble to the surface regularly when called upon. And certainly, they came to the surface at every school visit.
It is unknown really what Mayor or Lord Mayor in Cork history started the school visits. There are historic records denoting visits in the early nineteenth century. However, it is unknown if the early visits were to all the city schools and even historical records show an unevenness in the visits – as in they were not pursued every year.
There are records that Lord Mayor Terence MacSwiney in 1920 had visits to many schools in the city because of his interest in education and there are many nods to this work in Cork historical records over the past one hundred years.
However, what is certain is that the Corporation of Cork, now Cork City Council, has had a huge interest in educational matters over many decades such as school attendance to student’s health to school buildings, to the provision of facilities for students. So perhaps it was only a matter of time before annual school visits came into being.
I remember well growing up in the 1980s and the sense of ceremony around the Lord Mayor’s visit and the obligatory going home early and the excitement around going home early. Many of my memories of Lord Mayor’s visits are very blurred but I still have memories of silence in my primary school hall in Scoil Chríost Rí and then the round of applause erupting in the hall as the glimpse of a gold chain appeared from hall’s entrance. I do recall taking in the various messages, which today, through nostalgia seem to be faded, but always revolved into a theme of always believing in yourself.
However, I was also fortunate that the amplification of the Lord Mayor’s visit was added to in my time by enthusiastic teachers supplementing the visit by telling stories of Cork and my parents bringing my sister, brother and I on picnics into forest parks and spaces in County Cork. Of course, all of these memories form part of my foundations of my deep curiosity and passion for the city.
So, well before I began my school visits as Lord Mayor, I realised it was never going to be a kind of clinical “tick the box” exercise of visiting each school. I knew it was going to be emotional and that childhood memories would flood back. And they did in abundance. The raw emotion never left me in my five weeks of visits.
In particular, in my old primary school I was reduced to being a kid again as memories I had not thought about in a while came flooding back. I was back in my old school corridor – the beat on the floor was the same and I now was the person everyone was waiting for.
In addition, there was the added pressure of what should my message be. It did not come straight away but the more I brainstormed the more I felt that a story about my own journey into Cork’s past exploring it and being swept away on a type of epic adventure might be the way to go. What emerged in primary schools and special needs schools in the first day or two of the visits was a type of performance piece of myself as a young student inspired by finding the city’s oldest map of the safe harbour for ships and inspired by Lord Mayor’s visits and teacher interventions.
In truth what emerged was a fun nostalgic reflection of searching for dusty historic maps, blowing off dead spiders and ultimately my message emerged – Go on a journey – that we all need to go a journey, remain curious and ultimately follow our dreams.
The secondary school and educational centre’s piece came later than the primary school piece and truth being told continued to evolve over the five weeks of the visits. The narrative revolved around how the stories of Cork can do everything from impressing someone, to disturbing one, to forcing one to remember, to being curious, to being sad and being full of joy – and that such emotions frame the sense of place in Cork but there is an onus on all of us to write the best version of our stories into Cork’s present and future and to stay connected into an ever evolving city whose sense of place defines it and needs to be minded.
My sincere thanks to all the principals and teachers I met for their courtesy, many of whom experienced the Lord Mayor visits in their childhoods and now are the gatekeepers and guardians of the traditional visits. Thanks to Lady Mayoress Marcelline and Finbarr for their portrayal of the librarian in the primary school performances (!) and to Nicola in the Lord Mayor’s office for overseeing the timetabling of visits.
As I left the last school visit, one of my core reflections was that Cork City is very fortunate with a generation coming through that is curious, dynamic, diverse, unique, enthusiastic and ‘up for the match’ to be the next guardians of what we as Corkonians are proud to call home.
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