A Night of Moving Stories: Crankie Island in Newcastle County Down
It was so special to be invited to experience the Crankie Island Song Project in person last night in Newcastle and to get to stand up and introduce the crankie box artwork I created for their counties Crankie song: Dear Little Town in the Old County Down.
The song itself is a traditional Irish emigration ballad, dating from the early 20th century, a quiet, aching reflection on leaving home, carrying memory across distance and the pull of return. When I first approached the piece, I wanted to respond to that sense of longing visually, not in a literal way, but through something more fluid and dreamlike.
In my illustration, a red-haired Irish woman gazes out across a New York cityscape. The curtains of her window dissolve into the sea, carrying her into a shifting, surreal journey. She grows wings, suspended somewhere between worlds, between where she is and where she feels she belongs.
As the scroll continues, she becomes younger, moving backwards through memory until she is a child, reaching towards her mother’s lips their shared red hair acting as a thread through time. Around her, fragments of place and story appear and dissolve: swallows in flight, a black sheep, glimpses of the town. By the end, the narrative softens into something more whimsical, fairies drifting across the sky and a fairy figure riding a black flying sheep into a pastel horizon, led by a swallow. The illustration referenced and interpreted the lyrics of the folk song, It felt important that the piece held both the weight of longing and a kind of childlike wonder.
Standing up to speak on the night brought up a lot of nerves, but it felt like one of those moments where the only way to grow through it is to go through it. There’s something in that experience that stays with you and maybe the next time I find myself speaking about my work in public, I’ll carry a little more courage and a new kind of confidence with me.
Public speaking isn’t something that comes naturally to me, under the stage lights which were so bright they almost erased the room, it felt like I was speaking out into darkness, rather than to the crowd I had just walked through to reach the stage.
But maybe there was something fitting in that. The piece itself is about distance, about reaching across space, about not always seeing clearly who or what is on the other side.
The whole show was visually and audibly mesmerising. Each crankie box was completely unique, full of character and storytelling, seeing them all together brought a real sense of the project as a whole a collective unfolding of many artistic voices, images and place.
The haunting voice of Cathy Jordan lingers long after the final note, her vocals pulling them all into the same universe. Hearing it live, accompanied by the band, added a depth and emotional weight that’s difficult to put into words, it moved through the room in a way that felt almost tangible.
It was a beautiful evening by the sea, with the Mourne Mountains rising behind the town, a landscape now familiar with me after referencing it in the artwork.
Huge thanks to Cathy Jordan and Peter Crann for inviting me to be part of it ✨💜
I even came home with a little trinket music box with the Crankie Island logo on it, such a sweet keepsake from the night and the project.
Their next show is in Dublin this Sunday at The Sugar Club, definitely one to experience if you can.
Me with the Crankie Island crew
