Young Laois Travellers team up with Portlaoise gardaí to paint stunning mural
Laois kids work with gardaí to paint mural representing Traveller pride and culture
A Laois community recently celebrated the unveiling of a stunning new mural in Portlaoise, which represents key features of their values and culture.
The mural was created by youths within the Laois Travellers Action Group, working with popular street artist Madderdoit.
The project received support from Laois County Council, Creative Laois, Laois Sports Partnership and community gardaí in Portlaoise, with the official unveiling taking place at the Laois School of Music on Monday June 8.
Ms Jules Fitzpatrick, Community Development Officer with Laois Travellers Action Group, praised the amazing work undertaken by the youths, and thanked all those involved in the project’s completion.
“The mural is painted beneath the dome at Laois School of Music. We did a series of four or five workshops leading up to its creation,” Ms Fitzpatrick told the Leinster Express / Laois Live.
“We work to help foster relationships with community policing gardaí, for the youths to get to know them and build trust. As part of that, garda Orla Nolan suggested the idea of a collaborative piece of work that gardaí and members of the group could do together,” she said.
Ms Fitzpatrick and her colleague Brian Byrne brought this idea to David Broderick with Creative Laois, who suggested a mural.
“Young traveller members of the group feel downtrodden, they say that they go to school and don’t feel that their culture is seen or heard,” Ms Fitzpatrick explained.
“It can be quite tough facing a lot of discrimination and exclusion out there, it’s through generations of difficulties. We formed a focus group with them and asked them what they wanted to see on the mural, and we all sat down with gardaí.
“The kids said that they wanted to have something in the town that represents them. They said that they have noticed representations of different communities around Portlaoise, and that they aren’t represented,” she said.
The twelve youths involved, aged from nine to sixteen, suggested a variety of things that should be featured within the mural.
“Family, religion and sports came up a lot, there were a lot of suggestions for horses and carts, boxing gloves to represent the young boys who box, and the girls loved makeup. They started sketching and working with Madderdoit through workshops, learning how to create stencils and use the spray paint,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.
The group decided that the use of words would be more powerful than pictures. The tagline for the mural, ‘our culture matters’, was previously used in an older awareness campaign, and was chosen as the focal point of the mural. After weeks of workshops and preparations, the group spent two days painting the stunning artwork.
“A massive amount of work went into this, they kids were just delighted. It couldn’t have been done without them. The community gardaí, myself and my colleague Brian also added our own stencils,” Ms Fitzpatrick said.
Documentary maker Ann Marie Kelly documented the project over the past several weeks, which was kindly sponsored by Roisín Lawlor.
Laois Travellers Action Group wished to thank all involved who made this project possible.