New Cork mural paints brighter future for Knocknaheeny kids

A brighter future beckons for the children attending a Knocknaheeny pre school centre after the unveiling on Monday of a new mural to make the north side building even more welcoming.

Braving the elements over the past number of weeks, artist Blanca Rice and several of the mothers whose children attend the Barnardos Brighter Future Early Years Centre on Ardmore Avenue, have been giving the red brick building's exterior a colourful makeover to match its welcoming and cheerful interior. 

Speaking to The Echo on Monday, Blanca said that she had had conversations with the parents and children about what they wanted to see on the outside of the building as it had been long thought that it needed to be made more colourful to measure up to the interior.

"In order to create the mural, I met the families, the team at the Centre and we chatted about what they would like to see and what's happening in the playschool but they had told me about the different things they found particularly significant," she said. 

"One of the things is the emotional education the children get and another theme is 'nature' which is very strong in the finished work."

Sarah O'Gorman of the Brighter Futures centre is thrilled with the result of the project which received funding from the Department of Social Protection.

"We were delighted to get some funding and we were able to commission Blanca to come in and paint a mural.

"We were talking about it for a long time as we were very aware that the outside of the building didn't reflect the inside of the building, we felt," said Sarah. 

"The inside of the building is very welcoming and fun, a great place, colourful and calming."

In the centre, emotional education is delivered using familiar characters such as a dog (called Dwayne), Daphne the Duck and Twiggle the Turtle and all of these feature in the finished mural which focuses on a tree and the idea of seeds being planted and blossoming. 

Located in Knocknaheeny, which is among the most deprived areas in the city, the centre welcomes 32 2-5 year olds every day for a mixture of supports, breakfast clubs and other fun activities to help them meet developmental milestones and become school ready. 

"Barnardos works in areas which seem to be deprived and when you look at the deprivation statistics, it's a hugely deprived area of the city, so we work very closely with parents providing children with a kind of haven in this area," said Sarah. 

"The centre was originally set up to improve the educational attainment of children as this was an area where children weren't achieving their best educationally," she said, adding that children weren't going on from primary to secondary school. 

Sarah had high praise for Blanca for involving the local community in the work.   Although from Argentina originally, Blanca's father, Patrick Rice, originally hailed from Fermoy and became a prominent human rights activist across Latin America.   She has painted murals in her native country as well as in Mexico. 

"It was great to get the mothers involved in the project - it helped the project significantly," said Blanca. 

The mural was unveiled by the children attending the centre on Monday morning - now they have a brighter building to look forward to as well as a brighter future.