After all you’re my wonderwall!

Waterford last weekend was a heady mix of colour, sunshine, Bluegrass and crowds of people. The late summer weather brought people out of their homes and attracted many a day visitor from across the south east region, to the City and County, to see and experience, two most diverse of festivals.

The 22^nd International Bluegrass Festival, took place in the picturesque village of Dunmore East and has been around, ehmm, for a number for years. This niche celebration, helps to extend the tourist season for the village, by incorporating a significant festival, into the last weekend prior to the “schools going back!”

Blue skies, “warm” Atlantic waters and very busy beaches all added to the festival’s flavour. This in turn attracted families, by the hundreds, and such is the compact geometry of the village, that mum, dad and the bairns, really could find something for everyone over the weekend. There were very few tears and tantrums as the Bluegrass delivered in spades and our home-grown Olympian, Mr Thomas Barr, added to the colourful mix by making a special guest appearance.

In the City, we were once again treated to a riot of colour, as unloved walls, gable ends and derelict buildings ALL received the Waterford Walls treatment. For once the local Garda turned a blind eye to the graffiti artists, whose canvases were quite literally a blank brick or rough plastered wall.

The event, is now in its second year and has grown significantly since 2015, with around 40 murals being created this year. It is a form of street art that delivers huge impact and sparks wild debate around the suitability of the finished piece. It is this unadulterated pure expression of the mind, that makes Waterford Walls work.

In addition to the many Irish artists, we have seen talented people from all around the world, including Brazil, Mexico and Australia, come to Waterford to leave their mark on our streetscape. Their legacy will be left for at least twelve months for us to view, like, dislike, criticise, applaud and debate.

That is what art delivers for us, the ordinary Joe Soap, the non creative people of this world, who see a piece of art and say “I could do that!” But the fact is that we could not do better and it is the art we are looking that has stimulated our mind to actually think!

“All the roads you have to walk are winding...”

As you wander around the City over the next few weeks, take time to seek out and look at the art that Waterford Walls has delivered. I guarantee, that should you that pass the same piece again, you will see a completely different perspective. Each time you view the work of the artists, possibly gravitating towards your favourites, you will be stimulated to think that little bit differently, as you view them in a new context. That is what art delivers by the bucket load.

The Waterford Walls project is without doubt one of the events that we need to support with increased funding. Any increase in public funding does of course come with the caveat of transparency and accountability. But there can be no doubt that this project has longevity, the ability to grow in both size and popularity.

Waterford, last weekend, was a national news story, for ALL the right reasons. It is that type of publicity that we need to court and demand if we are to move the City forward. We have legacy issues with very poor political clout and it will take years to redress this imbalance.

In the meantime, we must focus on what we are good at and we must seek out the events and festivals that are worth their weight in gold and start backing these.

With 2017 just around the corner, our summer in the City and County should have a beginning, middle and an end. With lots of smaller “support events” taking place in between three cornerstone events of significant scale.

PS. Sceptical, I am NOT! Opinionated, YES! Passionate about Waterford – NEVER A DOUBT!

What now Rio has gone?

Thomas Barr arrives home!

I woke up, early, on Monday morning, sore and stiff from another battering from the Sean Kelly 160km Comeragh Challenge (well done ALL involved). Switched on the television, low and behold there was NO more news from Rio on the BBC Breakfast! The Olympics had ended on Sunday evening with a riotous closing ceremony.

What now for the sporting mad who tune into this world showcase every four years and watch all manner of sports, which we never knew existed, but could get so excited about.

Rio was destined to be a very tough act to follow the hugely successful 2012 London Olympics, with packed out arenas, stadia and swimming pools. London, a City so accessible to the rest of the world, was always going to be an incredibly well supported games, as it can be directly reached by a plethora of sporting mad countries. But to get to Brazil in large numbers was going to create many challenges.

Brazil, as we know, is the embodiment of a football crazy nation and to get the circa 200 million people of this country to go to weightlifting, swimming, judo, rugby sevens, skeet shooting (clay pigeons to you and I) etc., some saw as impossible.

But as the Olympics entered their second week, with more and more home-grown success stories emerging, we started to see fewer and fewer empty seats. The Games had started to grip the imagination of the Brazilian public. A few medals here and there also helped – 19 in total, including 7 gold.

I followed my own Scottish competitors as they gave 100% (nobody can really give 110%) contributing significantly to helping Team GB and NI to second place in the final medal table. A collection of medals that will lift a nation and motivate a generation to get up off the sofa, switch off the PS4, stop chasing Pokémon and get inspired to try out a new sport.

Whilst, here in Ireland we watched our boxers embroiled in a drugs allegation and then the main medal hopes, would lose to judges who were quite clearly watching fights with their eyes closed. We viewed in horror as Patrick Hickey, the head of the OCI, made headline news for all the wrong reasons. Was Ireland’s only reward for going to Rio, to be the cold hard steel of a set of handcuffs – no gold, silver or bronze?

Then just in time, along come the O’Donovan brothers, fuelled on spuds and steak, pulling like dogs, to row their way to a silver medal. Annalise Murphy, under the watchful eyes of Christ the Redeemer, sailed her Laser Radial to another silver medal.

Olympic flag arrives in Tokyo.

But surely the hero of these games has to be Waterford’s own Thomas Barr? He started his own qualification in that most punishing and exhausting of races, the 400m hurdles. Now just imagine trying to run flat out, for 400m, and then trying to jump over ten 3-feet high hurdles.

Thomas, ranked 10^th after round one, then won his semi-final to reach the final. He dipped under the magical 48 second barrier and finished fourth in the Olympic final. An incredible achievement from the Ferrybank AC athlete, to reach the final and to be the fourth best hurdler in the whole world, is something we in Waterford must embrace and shout about. I hope that Thomas gets his just rewards and is asked to compete in every Diamond League event for the next 12 to 24 months.

So, as the Olympic flag was handed over to Tokyo, Japan, for the 2020 Olympics I now have four long years to wait to reacquaint myself with such diverse sports as archery, diving, wrestling, water polo, taekwondo, weightlifting and even trampolining!

Good Bye Rio!

Rio 2016 was, by all media accounts, going to be a disaster of an Olympics. It was to be the Games that would be defined by the Russian drugs scandal, political skulduggery, budgetary and security concerns. The last three weeks we have seen athletes give their ALL for their country and we can ask no more than that.

The Rio Olympics were quite simply “Perfectly, Imperfect!”