As a member of the chart-topping Girls Aloud, Nadine Coyle is adored by thousands of fans worldwide.
Nadine Coyle.
Now a local group is turning to the Derry singer, who earlier this week gave birth to a baby girl, in the hope of attracting tourists to one of the city’s most deprived areas.
Along with the city’s legendary Undertones and boxer John Duddy, the 28-year-old will among 28 iconic figures from the arts, literature, sport, music and science from Derry to feature on a new artwork aimed at drawing tourists to the Cornshell Fields housing estate in Derry.
The artwork is being created thanks to a lottery windfall from Culture for All and will showcase Derry’s history through a wall-mounted artwork to be erected in Ballyarnett estate.
The figures, chosen by the young people and residents, will also include poet Seamus Heaney, Turner Prize nominated artist Willie Doherty and Amelia Earhart, who touched down in a field in the area after flying across the Atlantic in 1932, the first woman to do so solo.
Artist Sean O’Donnell is working with 30 young people and a number of adult volunteers to create 28 storyboards of iconic figures who were born in Derry or have strong links to the county.
One board will represent the City of Culture, with the final board featuring the names of those taking part in the project.
John Duddy.
The boards will then be mounted on a wall in the estate using a steel frame.
The artwork will be launched at a special event next month.
Project manager Catherine O’Donnell, from Off the Street Community Youth Initiative, said the wanted to make the artwork a “tourist attraction.”
She said: “Cornshells is a large housing estate with absolutely no provisions – it has a shop and above that is a little community hall. There are no youth provisions – it’s out on its own.
“This is a reimaging and promotion of Cornshells. We want to make it a tourist attraction. These are iconic figures from the county.”
Catherine said the young people in the area were “throwing themselves” into the project.
She added: “’They’re really excited. We couldn’t take all the kids that wanted to take part. Just that sense of personal achievement that some of these kids are going to get out of it is going to be mean so much. They’re not all high achievers at school, and some of them come from difficult backgrounds so this is something for them to take pride in and say, ‘I did that’.”
She said she hoped the figures to represented in the artwork, which is to include a backdrop representing the first City of Culture, will serve as an example to young people in the area.
The Undertones.
She concluded: “We chose the figures deliberately to inspire them in different fields of work. So not only could you be a footballer, you could be a scientist, you could be a writer – look at what these people who have come from this area have done.”
Off the Street Community Youth Initiative in partnership with Cornshell Community Network, received an £8,235 grant to run the Cornshells Historical Culture Wall project.
It is one of 33 groups across Northern Ireland awarded grants totalling £256,567 from the Big Lottery Fund and Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Culture for All programme.
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